LANDOWNERS from the South-West sought assurance last Friday, that the decision to transport Foot and Mouth infected cattle in the region for incineration was absolutely risk free.

Representatives from the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) attended an extraordinary stakeholder's meeting in Taunton with vets from the Government's animal health department.

John Mortimer, South West Director of the CLA, said he wanted to know why the decision was taken to transport slaughtered cattle to Frome and how secure the movements were.

"It seems strange that infected carcasses are being transported from Surrey to Somerset, we need to know the rationale behind this decision and that it is completely risk free."

The CLA's national president, David Fursdon, has already asked the Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, for an explanation of the need to transport carcasses to Somerset.

Mr Mortimer said: "His answer was that the state vets have recommended Frome as it has modern biosecurity facilities. But farmers in this region need to be certain - absolutely certain - that the lorries used for transporting these carcasses are totally secure, that the virus cannot be transported by or escape from these lorries and that once the carcasses arrive at Frome there is no further risk of an airborne virus escaping."

He added that one of the key issues for the farming community was communication.

"They need to know how the situation is developing on a daily basis, they need to know when issues such as moving animals to slaughter are likely to be resolved and when the extent of movements in and out of the infected zones will have been analysed in sufficient depth to provide a clearer picture of the likely scale of the outbreak," he said.