A 24-HOUR vigil is being staged against a proposed mass burial site at Petrockstowe after residents claimed MAFF had failed to reassure them over health fears.

A group of 100 protesters, including concerned mothers with babies in pushchairs, on Tuesday marched more than two miles from East Fishleigh to the site at Ash Moor, where up to 400,000 carcasses from the foot and mouth cull are earmarked for burial.

The decision to take direct action was made following a meeting last Friday at the Baxter Hall in Petrockstowe when questions were asked of MAFF, environmental experts, doctors and engineers about the site where the first carcasses are expected to arrive in two weeks.

Protester Barbara Greenhill, who has three children, said MAFF had failed to listen to local people's concerns about the potential effects on their long-term health and the environmental implications of this burial site.

She claimed new information was coming out all the time through independent reports to suggest the site was not suitable for mass burial.

The main fear is that leachates — the liquids which are given off when the carcasses decompose — will leak from the 80-metre long barrows and cause pollution and water borne diseases. There are also concerns about airborne diseases and gases being emitted from the site.

MAFF's plan is to bury the carcasses in 15 barrows with leachates and gases removed from the site for a period of up to 10 years while the bodies decompose.

Mrs Greenhill said: 'What we wanted MAFF to do is to address our queries and concerns over the safety aspects and they have not.

'I was not against this site in the beginning but I wanted it smaller and safer.

'This is a quick-fix experiment and I am not prepared to give permission for my children's health to be experimented with in this way. I will carry on protesting as long as it takes to stop this site.'

Resident Alison Heard said she had every sympathy with the farmers but there were just too many animals being proposed for Ash Moor.

She said: 'It's not just a case of 'not in my backyard' this proposal is simply not safe.

'I would be happy to bury carcasses on my land but I cannot agree with this.

'People think this is a burial site but it is a chemical plant - they are going to liquify carcasses in chambers the size of football pitches. There will be liquids and gases produced and we are supposed to believe there will be no leakages.'

Mrs Heard said despite three public meetings in Petrockstowe attended by MAFF and experts, there had been no reassurance, in fact people were less reassured after each one.

'The site is not geographically suitable and is subject to flooding,' she said. 'The Environment Agency is not enforcing its normal rules — we have not been given any guarantee of safety at all.'

More than 200 residents who attended the Baxter Hall meeting last Friday were told that the Ash Moor site was chosen after an exhaustive search throughout the infected area of Devon.

Martin Booth from the Environment Agency said Ash Moor was probably the best in geology terms in this part of Devon in which to site this engineered system but there was an element of 'belt and braces' attached to the design to make sure nothing leaked out.

He said the agency was satisfied that with all the requirements in place the site would be equivalent to any other waste disposal site in the country, including those that took toxic waste.

From ageing tests on the permeable liner which would be used in the base of the pit it was likely that it would last at least 60 years, the meeting was told.

Mr Booth said in a lot of areas of Devon animals could not be buried into the soil because the ground water was so high and this was why the agency had been against burying on individual farms.

Director of public health Dr Mike Owen said he not not believe from the design specification that there would be any risk of water borne or airborne diseases if the long-term monitoring was in place.

But local GP Asad Aldoori said 'ifs' were not good enough and he shared the concern of local people.

'It is extremely difficult to find scientific sound advice and the experts are not coming forward with any reassurance as far as I can see,' he said.

'We do not know for sure how long the membrane (lining the burial pit) will last and if it becomes flawed we will have an environmental disaster on our hands —am I going to be looking at an epidemic of e-coli or cryptosporidia in the future?'