I WAS horrified to see animal carcasses being loaded onto a lorry at the side of Baynhams Farm, on the main Hereford-Ledbury road, during evening rush hour on Monday, April 9. These animals had been killed days ago and were piled up behind a hedge, beside the back garden of what are now private homes (the converted farm buildings of the old farmhouse).

The burial pit or pit where the carcasses will be burned is on the other side of the road. Ministry officials were directing the traffic, so that passengers in vehicles that were stopped, had full sight of the horrors of this foot and mouth disease. If the carcasses are to be burned, the burning bodies (and smoke) will be clearly visible from the roadside.

What I cannot understand is the length of time it has taken to dispose of the bodies and the unbelievable time MAFF chose to move the dead animals. Children are on their Easter holidays; it was evening rush hour. These animals could have been moved and disposed of before Monday.

The dangers of disease, infections and pollution from the bodies of these poor creatures is well known, yet our wonderful Government and MAFF seem utterly unable to respond with any notion of urgency.

Instead, all we hear from the Government and the media, is that apparently, the UK countryside is open and everyone must come here for their holidays - who are they kidding?

Visitors do not want to witness such spectacles as I was forced to see tonight. If our Government are truly concerned to help tourism and agriculture in rural areas, then they'd better get their fingers out and start acting with some sense of urgency and responsibility over foot and mouth.

Any confidence I had in Tony Blair's New Labour is now completely destroyed. Nothing would ever induce me to vote for a party that has shown itself to the whole world as being so inept and so very ignorant of both rural and food production affairs.

Our leaders haven't got the first clue how to lead, how to plan or how to organise, when it comes to a crisis at home. Bombing people in other countries is a different matter however and this they seem to manage brilliantly.

COUN MS L NUSSBAUM, Robinsons Meadow, Ledbury.