SIR: At last the poor farmers are to be compensated. Is this I wonder for turning vegetarian cattle into cannibals (presumable because their profits would have been higher)? I was always led to believe that farmers cared about the land and understood nature. How wrong can a person be?

As for compensation, will this extend to the many thousands of workers, who, like myself, have been made redundant because of this fiasco, or will we be filed away as not really unemployed just victims of the way this whole sorry mess has been mismanaged by this inept government.

Thank God for the veterinary surgeons who stood up and refused to slaughter uncontaminated cattle. If this leaderless government had been allowed to have its way they would have slaughtered everything with four legs then, if instructed by Brussels, started on those with two.

David Anthony Flitcroft

Philips Avenue, Farnworth

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.