Where did foot-and-mouth disease come from?

In 2001, environment editor Michael McCarthy met Paul Cheale, who was facing an expensive cleaning bill after his Essex abattoir became the centre of the outbreak

(Tom Pilston/The Independent)

Paul Cheale, a pig breeder and abattoir owner, woke up to a farmer’s worst nightmare yesterday when he found his Essex property at the centre of Britain’s first outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease for 20 years.

His Cheale Meats Abattoir at Little Warley, near Brentwood, was doubly surrounded – by the yellow-and-black isolation tape of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and by TV crews and journalists wanting to know what had happened.

Mr Cheale looked shaken and could not keep the tremor out of his voice when he emerged to give his version of events. “We are devastated,” he said. “It is a real tragedy – the farming industry has been through BSE and swine fever and now we are faced with this.”