Fraud probe amid foot and mouth fears

Irish Agriculture Department officials were today investigating suspicions that fraud was involved in the movement of a consignment of 248 lambs believed to have come from a farm in Northern Ireland which is at the centre of a foot-and-mouth scare.

The lambs were delivered to the Kepak meat plant, at Athleague, County Roscommon one of the Irish Republic’s biggest sheep and meat processing factories last Tuesday, and were slaughtered immediately.