Farmer found guilty of failing to report foot-and-mouth

Bobby Waugh, the pig breeder whose farm was the first known source of Britain's foot-and-mouth epidemic, was found guilty yesterday of failing to report the disease. His trial revealed severe weaknesses in the Government's provisions against foot-and-mouth.

A district judge in Bedlington, Northumberland, also convicted 54-year-old Waugh of feeding the pigs unprocessed waste ­ a practice considered a foot-and-mouth risk ­ but acquitted him on two counts of causing unnecessary suffering to pigs, one of bringing unprocessed waste on to the farm and a further three charges of failing to dispose of animal by-products at his Burnside Farm piggery in Heddon-on-the-Wall.

Though the guilty verdicts shoulder Waugh with some responsibility for the devastating epidemic, the trial has also shown up the former Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, whose sensitivity to accusations of poor preparation for foot-and-mouth has led it to resist all calls for a full public inquiry and to refuse to testify at three inquiries set up by rural county councils.

The case has revealed a depleted number of northern ministry vets were unfamiliar with foot-and-mouth's symptoms. It has also shown how Waugh slipped through the net of frequent veterinary inspections.

Waugh's criminal failure to process the waste swill (leftovers from schools and restaurants) was exposed by ministry cameras that located cutlery, plastic sandwich wrappers and even Chinese porcelain spoons amid pig feed, demonstrating that it had not been subject to cursory examination.

Waugh's attempts to defend himself were limited by his testimony, which was virtually inaudible because he has no teeth. But what he did say demonstrated a high-minded belief in his farming practices. "Vets might be OK with cats but have no practice with pigs," Waugh told the judge.

Waugh has known little but pigs since the age of 14. At Burnside, he was allotted a tedious daily routine of feeding pigs and handling slops. "We weren't bothered about the quality of the pigs. The ones I wanted were just any old rubbish to fatten up," he told the court.

But why his swillfeeding practices had not been spotted earlier is baffling. The trial was told the Ministry of Agriculture had been on tenterhooks about pigswill farms after the Pan Asiatic O-type strain of foot-and- mouth took hold in countries such as Egypt and Mongolia in the 1990s. Ministry officials had written to Britain's 100 pigswill farmers, including Waugh, to warn that slops could cause the disease.

Despite the 1998 letter, Waugh's offence had not been detected at twice-yearly inspections by the local ministry vet, nor in December 2000, three months before the foot-and-mouth epidemic took hold, when he was visited by a vet and trading standards officer for an inspection.

A closely guarded trading standards log of this crucial meeting states that although the pigs were "generally in a good bodily condition", two were lame. Mick King, the head of Northumberland trading standards, has indicated there was a "difference of emphasis" over what action to take between the ministry vet and his own officer. The officer wanted firmer action than Maff's preferred "quiet word in the ear" but only the vet could approve a prosecution, so Waugh continued trading.

Yesterday, Mr King said the complex demarcation lines between trading standards and the ministry needed to be re-examined. "It is astonishing that Maff wrote to all farms to say foot-and-mouth was rampaging around the world and yet did not ban outright the use of slops as feed, which carried the threat. Things were allowed to ride," Mr King said. "Most of all, this is about resources. You can't blame individual vets when the state veterinary service has been cut back so much."

The hearing was adjourned until next month for pre-sentence reports.