NORTH Yorkshire County Council is to be asked to hold a public inquiry into the alleged mishandling of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Heartbreaking and horrifying stories of the way the crisis was handled by Defra officials were told to Vale of York MP, Miss Anne McIntosh last Friday.

It was standing room only in the large function room of the Three Tuns hotel, Thirsk, where Miss McIntosh had called a crisis meeting with local farmers.

Opening the meeting, she said that, although there was good news with the blue box restriction round Thirsk being lifted that day, it was obvious from the number present that there was still very much a crisis.

She invited views and concerns to find out the most pressing issues that needed to be dealt with at government level.

The gathering heard stories of Defra officials tramping over farmland where farmers had done their best to adhere to the strict legislation, and of the reams of paperwork needed to move cattle and sheep.

Farmers were also angry at being blamed by some government ministers for spreading the disease.

One farmer, Mr John Swales said: "The government is thrusting blame on farmers, yet it was nothing to do with with us. We co-operated fully, but Defra officials didn't seem to be aware of how they could be spreading the disease. The department's own people broke the bio-security rules, not the farming community."

A woman farmer said it was bad enough to have suffered from the foot-and-mouth crisis but then to be blamed for spreading it was diabolical.

The government was acting in a very "unBritish" way, said another farmer. "We are condemned as guilty before we are given a chance to prove our innocence," he said.

Many expressed the fear that, if the new Animal Health Act went through, farmers would have no chance at all if there was even the slightest suspicion of disease. Officials would be able to walk in and condemn all the stock.

Miss McIntosh agreed that Defra officials did not understand farming. "I think the government should insist that officials spend three months on a working farm and then perhaps there would be no contradictory advice on how to deal with a similar crisis," she said.

Miss McIntosh was asked if there was any way the government could be forced into holding a public inquiry.

She said it would be difficult as the opposition was in a minority but she suggested that the county council might hold its own inquiry, the results of which could then be handed to the government.

She said several farmers had, in fact, received letters of apology from Defra over the way it had handled certain cases. If a large business had received such damning apologies in letters like those, it would be used as evidence to sue, she said.

"Unfortunately I think the apology is as near as some farmers are going to get unless we can embarrass the government with our own public inquiry into the mismanagement of the crisis."

One farmer said rules had to be workable, saying: "We are talking about our livelihoods here. There is much talk of animal welfare; what about human welfare? The whole future of farming is at issue."

The MP promised to take up and follow through all the issues presented.

l Miss McIntosh this week raised the issues in a comprehensive letter to Mrs Beckett and in what she described as "a stream" of written questions