THE foot and mouth disease outbreak allegedly started on a British farm which used pig swill made from discarded school dinners. Whenever will we learn the crucial lesson that cutting corners is a bad idea?

The rapid spread of FM shows just how big the national and international animal transportation trade has become.

Instead, if slaughter took place much closer to farms, meat could go to market on the hook, not on the hoof.

Perhaps we should also change EU agricultural subsidies -- currently worth over £10,000 a year to every EU farmer. Why not give it to those who use less intensive methods of production? Animals are not machines after all.

Something must happen soon, otherwise the cost of the emergency measures for BSE and FM could well break the EU's budget. That would have very serious consequences indeed, not least for Britain's beleaguered livestock industry.

GARY TITLEY MEP (Labour, North West), Spring Lane, Radcliffe.