A 74-year-old Winkleigh farmer has spoken of her distress at having to wait a week for her slaughtered animals to be taken away to a rendering plant.
Violet Moynihan, who has farmed at Bryony Farm in Winkleigh since 1983, said it was bad enough losing her herd of cattle to foot and mouth disease but seeing their carcasses day after day was very traumatic.
'I feel the situation has been handled very badly by MAFF,' she said. 'The smell was like nothing on earth.
'When you see the Government saying everything is under control it is really hard to take — when you are on the receiving end things are not so good.'
Mrs Moynihan's case is one of those being taken up by Okehampton and Hatherleigh branch of the NFU, which is appealing directly to the Ministry of Agriculture to get the incineration of animals speeded up.
Branch secretary Simon Whattler said it was so disgusting that farmers were expected to have their livestock lying in a rotting heap outside their back door.
'Farmers are there to look after after fit and healthy animals not to deal with the aftermath of them being killed.
'They have suffered enough — it is a most distressing situation for them.'
Mr Whattler said he had spoken to two or three farmers in the last few days who had to obtain special licences to leave their farms because they could not cope with dead animals lying around for days on end.
'This is a situation we wanted to avoid and we are doing everything we can to speed up the disposal of carcasses,' he said. 'We have gone directly to Whitehall to try and get the army mobilised.
'The army ought to have the facilities to set up funeral pyres at a much quicker speed than at present.'