LIQUID run-off waste from a foot-and-mouth burial pit is being taken for processing to Teesside.

The residue, which forms when rain falls, is being pumped off a burial site at Tow Law, County Durham, to ensure it does not get into the water table.

It is being stored in steel tanks and driven to Northumbrian Water's treatment works at Bran Sands, Redcar.

A spokesman for the water company last night insisted the operation was safe.

He said: "We only agreed to handle this stuff after it was arranged for it to be certified, guaranteed virus-risk free, before it leaves Tow Law.

"At most it will be one tanker a day, more probably it will be two or three a week. Putting it into perspective, at Bran Sands we treat around 5,000 cubic metres an hour. It will be insignificant."

The residue will be exposed to temperatures of more than 400C, turning it into pellets, which will be either used in the manufacture of concrete or as fertiliser.

The news broke in the same week that a train ferried 1,200 tonnes of animal pyre ash from Teesside to a landfill site in Buckinghamshire.

The Northumbrian Water spokesman said the company had been chosen for the contract as they were "the experts'' in dealing with waste, and the complex at Bran Sands was the ideal place to deal with it.