Originally from: Farmtalking
                        
MASS ANIMAL BURIAL SITE FINALLY LAID TO REST from the Western Morning News by –

NATHAN PYNN AND PAUL ANDREWS

09:00 – 09 September 2003
 
 The controversial Ash Moor burial pit – which symbolised the Government's blunders over its handling of the foot and mouth crisis – will finally be put to rest this week as the first bulldozers moved in to fill in the huge holes which were intended to hold up to 500,000 animal carcasses. Bristol-based company Churngold Remediaton has been given the contract, by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, to restore the pit to farmland.

More than 75,000 tonnes of materials are expected to be extracted from the site including lime stone from three of the planned 15 barrows which were eventually dug.

The work is expected to take up to 20 weeks to complete before being put on the market as farmland.

It is expected to fetch around £300,000 with all the proceeds going back into Government coffers.

Local group STAMP (Stop The Ash Moor Pit) have campaigned to see the site restored.

Vernon Brown, of STAMP, said: "I am surprised that work will begin this year – we had it in our minds that it wouldn't be until next spring.

"Any work being done on the site is good news but we must now look to the future."

One resident, who did not want to be named, said: "Why has Defra wasted all the good weather and only started to restore the site now when we are starting to get into autumn and winter, if they are not deliberately delaying doing the work.

"While it is still Government-owned property it will not be safe. If another foot and mouth outbreak was to happen and the work restoring the site is not finished then they are more likely to use it."

A Defra spokesman said: "We will basically restore the site back to what it was before, which was part of the land owned by quarry company Imerys."

John Burnett, Lib-Dem MP for Torridge and West Devon, whose constituency includes Ash Moor, said the restoration work signalled the end of an "appallingly managed episode by the Government".

"This was always a totally unsuitable site for mass animal burial and it is a disgrace that so much public money has been wasted on it.

"What Defra should do now is to donate the land to a conservation group like the Devon Wildlife Trust for a wildlife haven.

"The thought of what the consequences could have been if the site was used is unbearable. The animal effluent could well have run into the water supply and that would have been disastrous. The story could have been very, very different."

Ian Johnson, a spokesman for the South West National Farmers Union, said: "It was an example of blundering on a massive scale and will not be missed by anybody."

He added that the Government owed it to the residents and farmers to erect a lasting memorial to the whole crisis which devastated the Westcountry.

"A permanent monument needs to be built at the site to remind future generations of the suffering it caused to thousands of animals and humans – a monument which should be unveiled by Defra Secretary Margaret Beckett or Tony Blair."

The burial site has become a symbol of the mismanagement of the whole crisis representing the widening gulf between the Government and the farming communities the crisis hit.

Farmer Layland Branfield, who also became an icon of the human suffering of the crisis, said the filling in of Ash Moor would never draw a line under foot and mouth.

"No one can ever forget what happened. What I would like to see now are systems put into place to deal with any repeat of the outbreak.

"Ash Moor was a huge white elephant which should never have happened. The most important thing now is for the Government to learn from the mistakes it made and to move on."

npynn@ westernmorningnews.co.uk