ONE of the founder members of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust has applauded a call to preserve rare breeds from being wiped out by foot and mouth.

The Country Land and Business Association wants a national strategy to preserve rare breeds of cattle, sheep and other animals from being eradicated by the virus.

Eric Freeman from Huntley, near Newent, who helped set up the Rare Breeds Survival Trust in the early 1970s, keeps Gloucester and Cotswold cattle and Gloucester Old Spot pigs.

He said he was worried because he is within three kilometres of an outbreak.

"Certainly, we've got to find ways of isolating these breeds, excluding them from a general cull if the breeds are to survive," he said.

"The problem is the blood lines, especially with pigs, as you can lose them very easily. There are only four blood boar lines with the Gloucester Old Spots."

Eddie Westley from Leddington, near Ledbury. has been feeding his prize-winning dairy goats with homeopathic medicine to try and protect them from the disease.

He has also got a herd of Gloucester Old Spot pigs which he has bred over the last ten years.

"If I had to lose all of my stock I wouldn't start over again. It would be too painful," he said.

But Mr Westley said he would be interested in co-operating in an artificial insemination programme to protect the blood lines.

Rosemary Philipson-Stow, from Pendock, who has a herd of Red Poll cattle, said she would like to see these rare gene pools protected.

"This policy of culling healthy animals, I think, is criminal," she said.

"It's very close to me, only four miles, and if they were to come to me I would definitely protest, I would not allow them on my farm. I think the farming community on the whole supports the slaughter but why don't they vaccinate rare breeds and hill ewes?"

Geraldine Holbourn of Longdon who keeps British Lops, one of the rarest breed of pigs in the country, said a strategy to protect rare breeds was desperately needed.