THE Government is in a no-win situation when it comes to disposing of animal carcasses.

Farmers have repeatedly told it to speed up the cull, but now the slaughtermen are moving rapidly, it is told that it cannot leave the rotting carcasses decaying in the fields.

When it tries to bury them, there is uproar because of fears of leeching into the watercourse.

When it tries to burn them, there is uproar because of fears of dioxins in the smoke.

And when it tried to move them to a rendering plant in Cheshire, there was uproar because the wagons were passing through non-contaminated areas.

Clearly, the Government is damned if it does nothing, damned if it tries one method and damned if it tries another.

But while accepting the impossibility of the Government's position, it is worth pondering how it managed to manoeuvre itself into such a corner.

And it is a corner it has found itself in many, many times in the past nine weeks. Is the countryside open or not? Should the army be called in? When is the disease under control? Are vaccinations a viable alternative? Do we burn or do we bury?

On all of these issues, it is clear that the Government has been woefully let down by its scientists and advisors. It is clear that they had not learned the lessons of the 1967 outbreak, and it is clear that they had done little disaster planning for when the disease re-emerged. It is to be hoped that someone in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Maff) at least has the wit to write down some of today's controversies and work out the best line of approach for any future epidemic.

However, we the public must also realise that there are no simplistic answers to any of the questions the Government is grappling with. For instance, there are compelling reasons to vaccinate and there are compelling reasons not to vaccinate - the science is far from conclusive.

Similarly, the evidence surrounding dioxins is uncertain - the World Health Organisation defines them as a "probable weak human carcinogen". But it doesn't weigh this probability against any possible dangers to the watercourse from burial or to the environment from leaving carcasses in the fields.

We can sympathise with the Government's dilemmas, but a little forward planning in Maff would certainly have eased them.