“…a total suspension of common sense”: ‘Ministers ordered the slaughter of up to two million healthy animals despite being told by their leading foot and mouth expert that the killing was not needed

to control the disease… Officials now admit that some of the assumptions that led to the cull may have been wrong. But at the time, says Dr Paul Kitching – then head of foot and

mouth at the institute’s Pirbright Laboratory, the world’s leading centre for research on the disease – his objections were ignored.’ Independent UK