Safety is priority in mass burials

Work has begun on burying sheep carcasses

The safe disposal of potentially infected carcasses will be the number one concern of troops organising the mass burial of culled sheep.

Work is underway at the first disposal site in the UK for thousands of dead sheep, at Great Orton, near Carlisle.

A series of four metre deep pits are being dug there to take the rotting carcasses of up to 500,000 animals.

The slaughtered sheep are being moved from farms and sealed in trucks to prevent the spread of the disease further.

Following their delivery the wagons are being systematically disinfected before leaving the airfield.

We will make sure that there is ongoing monitoring above, around and underneath the site to ensure that it remains safe for future generations

Archie Robertson, Environment Agency

Brigadier Alex Birtwistle, who is heading the Army operation in Cumbria, said the army can cope with the task in hand.

He said: "Cattle cannot be buried because of the BSE risk, sheep can be buried or burned, and we have about 70,000 sheep to pick up, and about 15,000 cattle we will have to dispose of."

Those cattle will mainly go to the rendering plant at Widnes.

Slaughtered sheep are arriving at the disused airfield for disposal

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I'm confident that we can speed things up enormously."

The airfield will be scattered with lime to alter the soil's acidity and destroy the disease.

The Environment Agency's Archie Robertson said he believed that there would not be leakage of infection out of the burial pit and into water supplies.

"We are pretty confident. We have put a lot of effort into understanding the geology, looking at the water table.

Site monitoring

He said the site would be closely scrutinised as it was being developed and following the burial.

"We will make sure that there is ongoing monitoring above, around and underneath the site to ensure that it remains safe for future generations," he said.

The whole ecology of the Lake District is under threat

David Maclean, Tory MP for Penrith and The Border

But David Maclean, Tory MP for Penrith and The Border, said he feared that the Environment Agency had focused so much on trying to protect the watercourse that it had lost site of the "bigger picture."

"The whole ecology of the Lake District is under threat, " he warned.

"In a couple of weeks' time we may have had the biggest blow to our biodiversity if we lose all of those speciality and unique flocks on our mountains in the Lake District, and we are heading for that right now."