Sir, - I have just read your report regarding the horror story of the cull in Bagby.

On that morning, a tearful neighbour told me of what was about to happen. I rushed off in my car, I couldn't get away quickly enough, and spent the day wandering the shops and going to the cinema, to try to avoid what was happening.

When eventually I arrived back home sometime around 6pm, the chaos was still in full swing, with huge wagons parked everywhere. Men and women, wearing overalls and plastic suits, seemed to be everywhere.

The trauma that we have been put through is beyond belief, like some futuristic sci-fi horror film.

Farmers, now with empty fields and empty hearts, are just expected to pick up the pieces and carry on. Farm workers, who can no longer milk etc are expected to find work elsewhere. Farmers' children, who have known these animals since they were calves, lambs, kids etc and loved them all, and helped to take care of them, have been badly affected too, and now the silence is deafening, not even any birds left, it seems, in our village.

It will be a long time before the local community feels whole again.

JENNIFER DRINKWATER

Bagby,

Thirsk.

Whose fault?

Sir, - I refer to recent reports of millionaire farmers being created due to foot-and-mouth compensation.

There seems to be a tide of almost hatred directed at farmers. The subsidies given to farmers over the past years maybe have been ill-thought-out and excessive, but is that not the system that is at fault? Any business would claim any cash it could to help its operation.

The foot-and-mouth payments are payments for the farmers' stock compulsory purchased by the government to stop the spread of foot-and-mouth (as a lot of houses were compulsory purchased on the route of the proposed A1 upgrade a few years ago - then to be sold but after being wrecked and devalued).

Maybe the powers that be should take the flak for the payments and not the farmers, who undoubtedly have other worries at this time.

SIMON MARTIN

Farndale Avenue,

Romanby.

Ignorance

Sir, - Lord Haskins shows not only stupidity but also ignorance when he compares French and British farmers.

Firstly, French farmers under the supposedly common playing field of the CAP receive nearly double the amount in subsides than the British. Secondly, how would he like it if angry farmers blockaded every Northern Foods depot? With the police standing by doing nothing. As would be happening in France.

The Labour government would not thank him if Downing Street was blocked in the same way until the government agreed to a fair and open inquiry into all the aspects of FMD.

J D TROTTER

East Layton Hall,

Richmond.