It is thought the farmer may have disturbed old anthrax spores while dredging a ditch and spread them unwittingly over adjacent pasture where cattle were grazing. The farm, which has not been identified, is three miles downstream from a disused tannery where local people say infected hides had been buried more than 30 years ago . The site has been earmarked for a housing development. Anthrax was diagnosed in the first cow on June 10 and in the second on July 1. The disease may be characterised by high fever and diarrhoea but often the animal dies suddenly without showing any signs of sickness.
Infection is usually through food or water.
Two or three cases of anthrax are notified to the ministry every year. The Wiltshire outbreak is the first this year. Any animal that gets the disease must be burnt and the affected farms quarantined and disinfected. In November 1994, three cows on a farm in Gloucestershire were infected by anthrax spores thought to have been left in the soil after another animal with the disease had been buried there 52 years ago. Even burial in quicklime is not sufficient to destroy the spores.