ALTHOUGH foot and mouth disease is an awful thing, they say it is not necessarily a killer. Cattle can survive it eventually.

It was another serious blow for farmers who lost livestock in Surrey and as I write sheep are to be culled on another farm. There was a religious person discussing it on Radio Cornwall. Those fanatics always bring God into every subject. What a nonsense praying is when farmers are devastated at their loss. Some have little or no money and there are no miracles.

Tests on pigs were inconclusive, but rather than have early vaccination Defra decided upon the culling of healthy pigs. It made me feel sick and upset. It's not the first time that disease- free cattle were put down on an adjacent farm as a precaution, it happened during the first outbreak!

Surely, being as the infections were said to have come from a leaking pipe at a government run laboratory, compensation for farmers to restock needs to be paid forthwith.

George Williams, Fords Row, Redruth