THE owner of an animal welfare sanctuary is facing an anxious wait to find out if her neighbour's culled stock were infected with foot-and-mouth disease.

Sally Rowley looks after 150 animals, including goats, sheep and ducklings, at the Weardale animal rescue centre near Stanhope. But she is frightened for their future after her neighbour, David Anderson, of Noah's Ark Farm, saw his stock culled on Tuesday under the dangerous contact regulations, leaving him to wait for test results to see whether his sheep and cattle were infected. The farm is only a few miles from a confirmed case in Blanchland.

Mrs Rowley, who said the hardest thing was the waiting and not knowing, is determined to keep her animals.

"If they try to take my centre out they will have a fight on their hands," she said. "I shall appeal and will resist this all the way. My pets answer to their names when called and are not part of the food chain. They should take the decision to vaccinate and get on with it."

Mrs Rowley paid tribute to members of the public who had continued to support the sanctuary during the epidemic.

"Just this week I have had a donation of £150 from a St Helens and Evenwood ladies' darts and dominoes charity night and I would like to pass on my thanks to them," she said. "When you are cut off for the second time, it is nice to know someone is thinking of you."

The owner of another sanctuary in the dale echoed her thoughts about vaccination.

Jan Edwards, who runs the Farplace rescue centre at nearby Westgate, condemned the failure to vaccinate as short-sighted from an economic, welfare and moral viewpoint.

She has goats, pigs and sheep at the shelter, but said the government had shown no regard for several key factors in handling the disease. She criticised the "if it moves, kill it" policy adopted in dealing with foot-and-mouth.

"The animal welfare issues have been completely ignored," she said. "Healthy and curable animals are destroyed en masse for economic reasons, as though there is no choice. Now this disease is back and showing no signs of letting up."

l Red box blow to feed crisis: page 14.