VILLAGERS are coming to terms with the news that a plot of land on the edge of their community will be a foot-and-mouth disposal site.

The land, off the A68 at Tow Law, County Durham, will be used to slaughter, burn and bury animals.

The Ministry of Agriculture (Maff) has bought the former Inkerman opencasting site, where work ceased in 1995, from HJ Banks.

Geoff Gale, a Tow Law town councillor and member of the Weardale Chamber of Trade and Commerce, runs a caf and general dealer's shopnear the site.

He said: "It has got to go somewhere, and it is out of the way along there. It is ground that has never been used for nothing else but coal mining.

"We are a rural community and we have got nothing left to contaminate, because everything has gone, so let's get on with it."

The site will include three burial pits, about 60m by 400m each, to hold about 120,000 carcasses.

Read more about Foot-and-Mouth here.