A POST foot and mouth fact-finding meeting involving Euro MPs, West Devon farmers and NFU members was this week hailed as a great success by West Devon and Torridge MP John Burnett.

Mr Burnett chaired the meeting at The George Hotel in Hatherleigh on Friday, when members of the European foot and mouth inquiry committee heard at first hand the devastation caused by last year's crisis.

The meeting followed a tour of the huge burial site at Ash Moor, built to contain the bodies of thousands of animal carcasses but never used.

Vaccination, the contiguous cull, disposal of animals, failure of customs services to control meat imports and countryside restrictions were all covered during the meeting.

Mr Burnett told delegates that in addition, the tourist industry in West Devon and Dartmoor had been 'pole-axed' by the crisis.

Mr Burnett said: 'The MEPs said at the end it was the most useful meeting they had attended — the visit was really very satisfactory.

'They are touring all the areas which were foot and mouth infected gathering information.'

David Hill, chairman of the NFU in Devon at the time of the foot and mouth crisis, told the meeting that money should be invested now, to prevent a future outbreak.

Mr Hill said: 'From my point of view, we should put a lot of money into testing and to have international acceptance, there needs to be a European standard.

'It needs European money and a few million should be used to develop that.'

Mr Hill also felt rendering capacity had to be increased in case of any future outbreak — he said the 'surreal, medieval' media pictures of burning animal pyres affected tourism in West Devon as badly as restricting access to open land had done.

Anthony Gibson, the NFU's South West regional director, said the argument for vaccination could not be looked at in isolation but had to be taken in context of what was acceptable to society.

'The approach we had this time was not acceptable — there has to be a better way, we have to have a policy that eliminates disease but does not damage other businesses — it has to be done on a world-wide scale,' said Mr Gibson.

He also said the standard valuation which had been adopted for compensation purposes should be looked at 'very seriously' for the future.

Jan Mulder, MEP and vice chairman of the European committee of inquiry into foot and mouth, described the stringent biosecurity measures, culling and vaccination policies used in The Netherlands during the crisis and confirmed no two-tier pricing existed for milk from vaccinated cows.

Mr Mulder said after the meeting he had found it very useful to speak to those directly affected by the crisis.

A spokesman for Nick Clegg, the only British MEP on the inquiry panel, said the visit had 'definitely' been helpful and the team had been particularly pleased to hear directly from farmers 'on the front line'.

He said the information gathered in West Devon would be reported back to the committee when it meets at the end of May in Brussels.

The NFU's Anthony Gibson and three farmers, probably including one or more from the Hatherleigh area, will also be invited to Brussels to speak on their experiences.