Police investigate 'foot-and-mouth for sale' offer

Police are investigating after a UK farmer was offered the chance to buy a sheep infected with foot-and-mouth disease for Stg£2,000.

Dyfed Powys police have contacted Nuala Preston, 39, of Trefoel Stud Farm in Newport, Pembrokeshire, after she received a telephone call from a man who offered to sell her the infected sheep.

She said he told her the animal could be used to spread the disease among her flock so that she could claim compensation.

A spokeswoman for Dyfed Powys Police said: "We have contacted the farmer involved and we are now investigating the source of the phone call."

Ms Preston said several farmers in Pembrokeshire had received similar offers and has urged them to come forward. She said she was "horrified and angered" by the phone call.

Ms Preston, who has 45 ewes, 10 cattle and breeding ponies at her farm, said desperate farmers could be tempted to take up the offer in an effort to get enough compensation to pull them back from the brink of bankruptcy.

In Cumbria, rumours have been circulating since the start of the foot-and-mouth outbreak that farmers were deliberately infecting animals with the disease to claim compensation, a spokeswoman for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said.

She said rumours included sheeps' tails and cows' tongues from infected farms being offered to owners of healthy livestock.

"We take these allegations very seriously," she said. "If anyone has any evidence, please let us know. This is deliberate fraud and it would eventually be a police matter."

Ian Mandle, group secretary for the National Farmers Union in north Cumbria, said: "Rumours have been rife about this for weeks now. But there is no concrete evidence. I don't think there is any farmer who would deliberately infect their animals."