As the soldiers started the cull of apparently healthy sheep from the three-kilometre zone around the foot and mouth outbreaks, Mr Hoon accompanied the commander in chief of the land forces, Sir Mike Jackson, to the mass burial site at Great Orton airfield, the abandoned Royal Air Force base. They watched sheep being slaughtered with stun guns, then bulldozed into trenches beside hundreds of diseased carcasses. As General Jackson was last seen heading the forces in Kosovo, fears were sparked that the crisis was now beginning to escalate out of control. But Mr Hoon said he was pleased with the army's work, and that resources were not an issue. It is not one involving human beings who cannot get on with each other, it is a very tragic disease in our own country.
Nobody likes to see death and it is just an awful waste.
Seeing the utter waste is very sad. Up to 2,000 healthy animals were slaughtered at the burial pit yesterday, alongside 8,000 or so decomposing carcasses that were pushed from dumper trucks into the graves. The first load of healthy animals arrived just before 10am. Whimpering sheep poked their noses out of slits in the packed trailers as they were driven over disinfected straw bales. Supervised by two Ministry of Agriculture vets, the sheep were herded, around 40 at a time, into metal pens on the edge of the graves.