Foot-and-mouth protestor charged

3 April 2001



Foot-and-mouth protestor charged

by Robert Stone

A 27-YEAR-OLD man has been charged with the attempted murder of a policeman at a foot-and-mouth protest at Sennybridge, Wales.

Policeman John Stone is recovering in hospital after being trapped for several hours when his van was crushed by a bulldozer

The bulldozer crashed through police vehicles controlling access to the Eppynt military range, injuring Mr Stones legs on Sunday (1 April).

Farmers and local residents were picketing the site where thousands of animals slaughtered because of foot-and-mouth disease were due to be buried.

Protestors immediately withdrew, but several hundred attended a meeting at Trecastle on Monday (2 April) and agreed to restart a peaceful protest.

They refused to accept reassurances that burying and burning up to 50,000 animals on the site posed no risk to public and animal health.

Graziers with rights to run 38,000 sheep on the range, which is in an area free of the disease, insisted that the whole area would be blighted for many years.

But Welsh minister for rural affairs Carwyn Jones has insisted that the mass cull in Powys will continue, and that there is no alternative disposal site.

The minister has also told protestors on Anglesey that all 40,000 sheep being culled there will be buried at a domestic rubbish dump near Menai Bridge.

However, he has refused to use a Trecatti landfill site near Dowlais, Glamorgan to be used to bury healthy animals shot for welfare reasons.

Alan Richards blocked the entrance to his Powys County Council smallholding at Montgomery to prevent the slaughter of his pedigree dairy herd.

Government officials ordered the that the apparently healthy animals should be killed because his farm is next to an infected unit.

Mr Richards said it was senseless to kill healthy animals which would have already gone down with the disease if they were going to catch it from next door.