EXPERTS have dismissed fears of a danger posed by a forgotten pit containing infected beasts culled in the 1960s.

The pit was said to be yards from Bobby Waugh's Burnside pig farm at Heddon-on-the-Wall, Northumberland. The farm has been identified as the possible source of the current epidemic.

A Ministry of Agriculture spokesman saidt: "The pit poses no risk of the virus spreading.

"Just as burying them in the 1960s posed no risk, so burying carcasses now poses no risk of the virus spreading."

More than 30 farms on Tyneside were affected by foot-and-mouth in November and December 1960.

Read more about Foot-and-Mouth here.