FARMERS are being sent videos on foot-and-mouth precautions amid fears they are unwittingly prolonging the epidemic.

The 14-minute film covers basic measures to prevent the spread of the disease, as well as how to check livestock for signs of illness, with 90,000 copies being sent to farmers nationwide.

Government advisors said the move was in response to evidence that some farmers were relaxing their guard, allowing the disease to linger and risking a repeat of the drawn-out end to the 1967 epidemic.

David Maughan, chairman of the Durham and Northumberland NFU livestock committee, said yesterday: "There is a temptation to relax, and when every movement on and off a farm has to be disinfected, after a while discipline starts to wear a bit thin.

"Maybe people thought they weren't going to get the disease and they weren't taking the care they should have done."

Mr Maughan, who farms at Morton Tinmouth, near Darlington, said some farmers could feel insulted at being told to take basic precautions, but it was important to reinforce the message.

The videos, being sent out by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), are backed up by an advertising campaign.

Government chief scientific advisor Professor David King warned: "What is required now is for all of us to put in this last big push on bio-security."

Meanwhile, Government officials have moved to allay fears after liquid escaped from a mass foot-and-mouth burial pit in County Durham.

Several residents of Tow Law claim leaching residue produced by decomposing carcasses had escaped from one of the pits at the Inkerman site.

But a spokesman from the Newcastle Disease Emergency Control Centre said no leachate had escaped from the site.

He added: "Some leachate has come to the surface of one of the trenches and collection of this into a permanent sump is being engineered this afternoon."

The spokesman was adamant there had been no danger to public health and he apologised to residents for bad smells caused by the day's work.

* A further case of foot-and-mouth was confirmed yesterday at Lealholm, on the North York Moors. The outbreak at Stonecroft Farm in Low Wood Lane, together with two others in Cumbria, brought the national total to 1,811.