The Guardian Downwind, there was a smell like diarrhoea and clotted blood. A block of more than 100 decomposing sheep thumped from a dumper truck into a pit. Limbs flapping, the yellowed carcasses slid fast, because they were turning to liquid slime. They left a trail of blood and clumps of rotting fleece on the metal container. The death smell, more pungent than manure, is now common around Cumbria.
People gag on it but are resigned to it.
A quarter of a mile from Britain's first foot and mouth burial site yesterday, there was laundry drying on lines. It would have to be washed again. Long abandoned by the Royal Air Force, it was already bleak and grey. By the end of this week, there will be 2km of mass graves there. About 20 trenches, four metres deep and 150 metres long, will hold half a million carcasses.