Emergency meeting over blood leak
9 April 2001
Emergency meeting over blood leak
By Robert Davies, Wales correspondent
WELSH councillors have called an emergency meeting after blood leaked from a lorry carrying dead livestock culled because of foot-and-mouth disease.
A disinfection team was called to a lay-by outside Llandovery at the weekend to clean up blood leaking from a lorry carrying carcasses for burial.
The incident shocked farmers in what is a clean area, and disease control managers immediately sacked the transport company involved.
Carmarthenshire County Council are meeting on Monday (9 April) to discuss what can be done to keep lorries involved in the cull off the countys roads.
Councillors had been assured that the approved route from farms in north Powys did not cross the county boundary, but the lorry driver ignored directions.
“This case we know about, but how many more have there been,” said Alan Morris, spokesman for the Farmers Union of Wales.
He added: “Farmers in uninfected parts of Wales are desperately worried about the convoys of trucks carrying slaughtered animals.”
Shadow Welsh rural affairs minister Elin Jones said there could be no greater threat to livestock than a lorry dripping blood on to roads in an untainted area.
Meanwhile, Welsh Assembly member Rhodri Glyn Jones (Plaid Cymru) has called for an investigation of geological faults near a carcass burial site.
Mr Jones claims that the burial site on the Eppynt military range could lead to contamination of the River Towy that flows through his constituency.
Elsewhere, farming unions described as near panic farmers reaction to confirmation of the disease at Park Farm near Caerphilly, Glamorgan,.
The unit is near unfenced common land grazed by thousands of sheep. They fear that all stock on graziers farms will be slaughtered as dangerous contacts.
Foot-and-mouth – confirmed outbreaks |
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Foot-and-mouth – FWi coverage |