I HAVE no quarrel with Ann Ward (letters April 19). She is entitled to hold strong views about animal slaughter. I don't consider myself a PR agent for MAFF, though - just a councillor doing the best I can to help defeat foot and mouth disease.

The mass burial site has a vital part to play in that and I am proud of the way many local people have accepted a distasteful, but temporary, disruption of their local environment in order to help the farming community deal with this crisis.

Peter Luff and I are agreed that, given the burial site is necessary, it is being run as well as we could hope, with impressive environmental safeguards. While I am confident that MAFF will honour the pledges they have made to restore the site when carcass burial is done, there is a lot more they could do.

The airfield is a wonderful, but unused, open space. There can be no prospect now of building anything near the area affected by the burials, so it could stay unused for generations. I feel we should now look beyond the ordeal of the burials and aim to turn the site into an asset and memorial to the start of the millennium.

I have asked MAFF and MoD to give the land to the local community, to create a country park. Trees could be planted on the burial mounds, wetlands dug and the site opened up to give surrounding villages very positive long-term benefits. They deserve it for the good grace shown in accepting the burials.

LIZ TUCKER, County Councillor, Throckmorton, Pershore.