Farm Pyres Are Spewing Toxins, British Activists Warn

Where there’s fire, there’s smoke, and where there is a foot-and-mouth pyre, there are dangerous levels of cancer-causing pollutants, scientists and environmental groups warned Monday.

Just as British officials were patting themselves on the back for reining in the epidemic that infects livestock, the government came under attack for putting human health at risk.

In the hardest-hit counties of Cumbria and Devon, residents have pressed the government to snuff out pyres spewing black clouds of smoke over their towns and villages. Some fires have been scaled back, but the government says it has to dispose of a backlog of rotting carcasses somehow.

Environment Minister Michael Meacher agreed that the burning of more than a million sheep, pigs and cattle slaughtered in the effort to control the spread of foot-and-mouth disease had released carcinogenic dioxins into the air. But he said that neither burning nor burial--the two main methods of disposal--is completely safe.

“None of the disposals is entirely risk-free, none of them. The question is to use the safest, the most effective disposal and to minimize the public risk by all possible means,” Meacher told BBC radio.

“Leaving carcasses rotting in the field is the worst option of all,” he told Parliament later.

His department confirmed that the fires have released 80 grams of dioxins into the atmosphere in the two months since the epidemic was detected--about a quarter of the dioxin emissions Britain produced all of last year. But Meacher downplayed the figure, saying that was just twice the amount released on “bonfire night,” the annual Guy Fawkes celebration when fires are lighted across the country to commemorate a 17th century plot to blow up Parliament.

Friends of the Earth spokesman Adrian Bebb called the figure “alarming” and said that Meacher’s comparison of the pyres with a bunch of bonfires was “a lot of spin.”

“Bonfire night lasts one night and is a lot of small fires. This is a strong concentration of huge fires which burn for weeks,” Bebb said.

Bebb said the dioxins--chemical byproducts released by pyres that are burning wood, fuel, carcasses and other items such as parts of old railroad cars--are not only harmful to humans and to parts of “the food chain, such as fish, but they risk contaminating the soil and water supplies.”

“Farmers are facing a possible double whammy from death of their livestock and land contamination,” Bebb said.

The issue erupted in the national media and rural areas as Agriculture Minister Nick Brown told a parliamentary committee that the average number of new cases of foot-and-mouth has fallen to 16 a day, down from a peak of 59 on March 27.

Government scientists had warned that the outbreaks could rise to 70 cases a day, but Brown said the policy of culling animals on infected farms as well as those on neighboring farms seemed to be containing the virus.

“The case for vaccination recedes as the number of daily cases declines,” Brown said.

The government has tried to convince farmers of the need to vaccinate animals in Cumbria and Devon, but many of the producers have resisted. Many countries will not accept livestock and meat imports from countries that vaccinate, because it is difficult to distinguish inoculated animals from those with the virus.

There have been 1,440 cases of the disease in Britain and 1.6 million animals have been slaughtered--about 3% of the nation’s livestock.

The government said that to stop the spread of the disease, animals should be slaughtered on infected sites within 24 hours of detection, and disposed of within 48 hours. But getting rid of so many carcasses so quickly is a problem, and there is a backlog of nearly 300,000 animals awaiting disposal.

Friends of the Earth maintains that the best option would have been to destroy the animals at a rendering plant or to burn them in an incinerator. The group criticized the government for opting to burn the carcasses in the open.

Many Cumbria and Devon residents agree. Devon farmer Bill Harper, who lives a mile from a pyre burning about 7,000 animals, said he worries the wind will shift and send the black cloud over his property.

“We just don’t know what is going to be contained in the fallout from the smoke,” Harper said on Sky News television.

He urged officials to let farmers bury the animals on their property, but prior attempts to bury carcasses have been met with protests about contaminating water tables.