A GRIEVING husband whose wife became the 82nd victim of variant CJD today slammed the Government's decision to compensate families as "too little, too late."

Health Secretary Alan Milburn has announced interim compensation payments of £25,000 at set to be made to the families of those killed by the human form of mad cow disease.

It will be paid immediately while full compensation settlements for each person are decided.

But for Andrew Bradshaw, whose wife Anita was died last July, it is too little, too late.

Anita's death has forced Andrew, of Stanley Street, Accrington, to bring up their children -- Rebecca, seven, and Reece, two -- on his own, and he admitted earlier this year he hadn't yet been able to tell his youngest what had happened.

The shift-leader at a Blackburn company today said: "While on one hand it is very easy for us to welcome this, I can't help but think it is too little too late.

"The more I think about it, the more I get annoyed.

"The Government knew about the risks of CJD long before it became obvious just how bad the situation was.

"If it had been more honest in the past, perhaps we wouldn't be in the situation where we are now.

"There is no way you can put a price on someone's life. The whole thing should never have happened."

An inquest in December heard that Anita, 30, contracted the disease after eating infected meat.

Tests after death showed she had a gene found in several other victims which could have made her more susceptible to the disease.

Her family had initially feared that Anita, a quality controllers at Vitafoam in Accrington, had caught the disease while working at a butcher's shop 14 years ago.

She was diagnosed with vCJD at the Royal Preston Hospital in December 1999 and died at Queen's Park Hospital, Blackburn and in her final days had to be fed through a tube into her stomach.

Mr Bradshaw added: "This has been more stressful and traumatic than you can imagine. We are trying to get on with our lives. We take one day at a time."