Huge pyres were being built across the UK Saturday night as farmers, vets and British government officials started the slaughter of thousands of farm animals. Cattle were led out of sheds one by one and killed with a single rifle bolt to the head.
As excavators dug huge holes in fields, men in white overalls gathered wooden railway sleepers, discarded fences and coal, before throwing thousands of carcasses on top for burning. Not since half a million animals were burned in 1967 has the country witnessed such scenes.
The mass slaughter is the latest desperate measure to curtail the foot-and-mouth disease that has paralyzed the British countryside. As the killings started from Essex to Northumberland, in London the UK's Agriculture Secretary Nick Brown declared he was cautiously optimistic that the outbreak had been contained, with no new infections reported in the last 24 hours.
The slaughter started at eight sites, and will last several days. Most of the animals are pigs, but on some farms sheep and cattle will also be killed. Their carcasses will be burnt to eradicate any chance of the virus surviving.
Burnside Farm in Northumberland in the north of England, believed to be the source of the outbreak, looked more like a construction site yesterday; mechanical loaders carted railway sleepers across a field to erect the pyre for 300 sows and 200 young pigs, which were killed last night.
At a neighboring farm, 25 cows were led away, presumably for slaughter. "That's Jim Brown's cattle," said two middle-aged men out for walk. "Terrible what's happened to him." One pointed to another two farms up the hill: "They say the cattle up there will have to go as well."
Meanwhile, men from the UK's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) in white overalls were rushing around preparing for the fires while police, fearing clouds of dense smoke, stood by to close the nearby A69 dual carriageway. Convoys of trucks arrived laden with more sleepers, discarded wooden fences and anything capable of burning.
At Headcorn in Kent, south-east of London, where a cattle herd is being killed as a precautionary measure, animals were yesterday being led one by one out of their sheds. A trained slaughterman then fired a single bolt into their skulls. After the animals slumped to the ground, bleeding from the wound in their heads, a vet made sure they were dead. Only when the entire herd is dead, which could take two days, will the fires be lit.
MAFF officials were cautiously optimistic that the outbreak is being contained. "We would expect to receive further reports from farmers now if it had spread, and so far there are no more confirmed cases," said Brown.
Brown urged people to avoid panic-buying of meat at supermarkets as rumors of a shortage swept the country.
Shops around Britain reported that meat sales were not abnormally large.
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