THE Army officer who led the North-East foot-and-mouth cull launched a devastating attack on the Government's handling of the crisis yesterday.

Giving evidence to the Cumbria inquiry into the epidemic, Brigadier Alex Birtwhistle said:

* When he answered the Government's call at the end of March last year, he found more than 50,000 rotting carcasses awaiting burial;

* There were not enough slaughtermen to dispose of animals;

* Officials were desperately short of trucks needed to move dead livestock;

* The whole operation had no direction.

Brig Birtwhistle, who has since retired, told the inquiry: "I immediately noted a long delay between diagnosis of the disease and slaughter, which was running at four or five days.

"I noted an absence of resources trucks, slaughtermen, and guns. Most critically, there was a backlog of animals lying on the ground."

Brig Birtwhistle said one estimate was that 50,000 animals were lying waiting to be disposed of, and added: "But I believe it was more than twice that. Some of those bodies had been there for two or three weeks."

He told the inquiry, in Kendal, that during a meeting with Tony Blair, the Prime Minister asked him if he thought the procedures in place would hold up. "I said 'No'," Mr Birtwhistle told the hearing. "He then instructed me to get on with it."

Brig Birtwhistle said he was convinced that if strict quarantine procedures had been put in place immediately, foot-and-mouth could have been contained in Cumbria.

He had 130 officers in the area and was "grossly overstretched", he said, adding: "The scale of the operation was massive. There were 30-40 outbreaks a day and we neither had a disposal site or a clear policy."

Brig Birtwhistle said no organisation or agency in charge had a plan to deal with the crisis, adding: "I had a contingency plan for everything - aeroplane crashes, nuclear disasters, but not foot-and-mouth."

By the time he became involved, the crisis was out of control, he said.

The inquiry continues today.

Read more about foot-and-mouth here.