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Contractors ‘sold top soil contaminated
with foot-and-mouth virus’
Valerie Elliott
Countryside Editor, The Times
Filed 15 Dec 07
©Valerie Elliott
This article was originally published
in The Times, 13th December 07.
It is reproduced here by kind permission of its author and
of the Newspaper
The second wave of the foot-and-mouth outbreak
in Surrey is likely to have been caused by contaminated soil from
the Government’s Pirbright scientific research laboratory,
an official inquiry has been told.
It is alleged that contractors working on
the £121 million modernisation programme at the laboratory
collected soil contaminated with live virus at the site and sold
it as top soil. Some of this was spread on land next to a farm where
animals were later identified with the disease.
A review of the 2007 Surrey outbreak conducted
by Iain Anderson – who headed the inquiry into lessons learnt
after the world’s worst foot-and-mouth epidemic, in Britain
in 2001 – has heard evidence from a number of people, including
private veterinary surgeons, who are convinced that this was the
reason for the disease’s resurgence.
A spokesman for the inquiry confirmed last night
that a number of people living locally had given evidence to this
effect during interviews.
The allegations, if proven, will bring new embarrassment
to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Under
government guidelines, waste from any site dealing with live disease
viruses requires a disposal licence from the Environment Agency,
but Defra, which took charge of the modernisation works at the laboratory,
appears to have overlooked the need for such a licence in this case.
The name of the contractors has not been disclosed
for security reasons. Firms that have contracts with scientific
research centres have frequently become targets for animal rights
extremists.
Dr Anderson’s inquiry, however, was told
that contractors used the soil as “a cash crop” rather
than paying for its disposal in a landfill site.
Top soil is sold for £10 a cubic yard and
a lorryload would be enough for 20 cu yards or £200. The cost
of dumping in a landfill site would be £2 per cu yard for
inert soil or £40 for 20 cu yards.
But given that the Pirbright laboratory was handling
live virus and there was potential for hazardous waste, the landfill
charge should have been at least £24/cu yard or £480
for 20 cu yards.
A full investigation into the disease trail from
the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Surrey is being conducted by veterinary
epidemiologists, and the latest claims are part of the new inquiry.
It is being alleged that infected top soil caused
the resurgence of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in September four
days after Debby Reynolds, the former Chief Veterinary Officer,
declared Britain free of the disease and the August outbreak over.
The pattern of cases suggests that this last outbreak
in Surrey, on the 20-acre farm known as the Klondyke, at Virginia
Water, owned by John and Sally Hepplethwaite, was linked to infected
top soil spread on land adjacent to their holding.
Lesions on their animals were ten to fourteen
days older than disease first spotted in an earlier wave of the
outbreak. The alarm over the last outbreak in September was in cattle
owned by Robert Lawrence, of Lyne, Chertsey.
Defra has come in for more criticism from a separate
review of the licensing arrangements at Pirbright by Sir William
Callaghan, a former chairman of the Health and Safety Commission.
Today he will recommend stripping Defra of its inspection role at
the laboratory and others which deal in dangerous animal pathogens.
Instead the Health and Safety Executive, which
already has responsibility for establishments handling deadly human
pathogens, will take on the inspection of these sites, in a move
approved by Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary. Defra was criticised
in initial findings about the state of facilities at Pirbright.
There was no comment from Defra last night.
A spokesman for Surrey County Council trading
standards, which is the enforcement authority for breaches of health
and safety at the site, said that its inquiries were continuing
and a decision on any prosecution would be made in the new year.
©Valerie Elliott
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