Beyond the line of straggly silver birches rises the pale smoke of a foot-and-mouth pyre

Beyond the line of straggly silver birches rises the pale smoke of a foot-and-mouth pyre. How End Farm is burning its stock.
Another fire burns at Smalmstown Farm, just to the north of Longtown and the silent sheds and pens of the auction market that became the unwitting distribution centre for the disease. Three miles from the Scottish border, Longtown and its unprepossessing rural hinterland has not seen such palls and slaughter since the days of the Border Reivers.But Longtown is not just another rural community stricken by the foot-and-mouth disease. It has been earmarked as one of two main “festering” centres in the United Kingdom from where the disease has been spread to sites around the country. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food vets can only guess just how many outbreaks eventually will be traced to Longtown.

In the meantime, the town’s 3,000 population has been placed in almost total isolation.Longtown’s notoriety rests on its mart, which attracts livestock buyers and meat traders from all over Britain and Ireland. Among those at the ringside on 15 February was Willie Cleave, the Devon dealer who unknowingly carried the virus to the West Country in a batch of sheep. It had arrived at Longtown in sheep brought across the Pennines from a holding near the infamous pig farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall.Yesterday the keep-out signs were up on the gates of the mart. Between 15,000 and 18,000 sheep and several hundred cattle are traded here in a normal week. The owners, Cumberland and Dumfriesshire Farmers Mart Plc, have had to lay off 60 part-time employees – their mart across the border at Dumfries is also closed.

Many of the market workers are sons and daughters of local farmers trying to supplement incomes in an already hard-hit industry.”The knock-on effects are right through the whole area,” said Malcolm Bendle the mart company secretary. Such is the virulence of the virus that the company directors, who are all farmers, have not dared to meet in person and have had to discuss the catastrophe by telephone. Even in an optimistic scenario the market will remain closed for another two months.Not until 10 days after the fateful sales of 15 February was the finger pointed at Longtown. Maff officials were handed the records of transactions but there have been suggestions that some animals may have been traded privately away from the auction ring.Mr Bendle doubts this happened but supports Maff’s appeal for information on any deals. Occasionally a trader will buy a batch of sheep and the farmer will notice a particular animal, perhaps a ewe in lamb, and buy it. “In our own minds we don’t think there will have been any out-of-ring deals, but we can’t guarantee it,” Mr Bendle said.Opposite the market, livestock wagons belonging to the local hauliers William Armstrong stand idle.

The company chairman, Bob Armstrong, has known three British foot-and-mouth outbreaks but “never anything like this.” Here again, the hauliers provide part-time work for farm families but there has been no need to lay anyone off. They are already confined to their farms.In the town there are tubs of disinfectant outside the HSBC bank and the bakers, and too many children are on the street for a weekday. The infant and junior schools have been closed, leaving children “bored sick” says one despondent mother. Both schools reopen next week though some farm children will not be returning.Longtown is living with a pariah status. A neighbouring school has asked its Longtown pupils not to attend and there is a story circulating of someone refusing to buy a car, advertised in a small ad, when he heard the owner lived in Longtown.”It’s desperate,” said Peter Jefferson, a butcher whose family has served the town for 72 years “Everybody is depressed. No one talks in the shop about the weather or families, its just foot-and-mouth and who’s got it.”Longtown is virtually surrounded by the disease, though not all the farms discussed in the butcher’s shop, or the Graham Arms, where dealers usually stay, are on Maff’s confirmed list The mood is almost one of bewilderment.