THE stench of burning flesh hung over Bromsgrove at the weekend as hundreds of carcasses were incinerated at a farm where foot and mouth had been detected.

Last Sunday 240 cattle and 20 sheep were slaughtered at Happy Bank Farm, in Stoke Prior, after the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) detected the disease.

The blaze is believed to have begun on Thursday and continued into the weekend.

Following the outbreak, farmers throughout the district are still vigilantly checking their stock for tell-tale signs of the disease.

National Farmers' Union West Midlands is advising sheep farmers to be careful when checking animals as foot and mouth does not show up well in sheep.

Farmers were granted a reprieve last Friday when they were granted further restricted movement of livestock.

The licence will allow some farmers to move animals to fresh pasture or put sheep into remote fields for lambing.

Other farmers are continuing to struggle and are losing livestock because they cannot move feed from one farm to another.

The NFU has welcomed the announcement that MAFF is to remove slaughtered stock to licensed rendering plants to speed up the destruction of carcasses.

Regional director Bob Forster said: "This will spare farmers the added distress of having to see their slaughtered animals burned on the farm." Towpaths and public footpaths are still closed to the public in a bid to isolate the virus, and residents are being urged to stay away from farmland.

l Foot and mouth round-up -- Page 7