GOVERNMENT plans to speed up culling operations in any future outbreaks of animal disease met with a mixed reception overnight.

Under a new Animal Health Bill, farmers' rights to go to the courts to prevent culls will be severely restricted - an act which, according to farmers' leaders and lawyers in hard-hit Devon, would take away the centuries-old right of an individual to seek the protection of the law against actions he or she feel to be unjust.

The NFU reacted more cautiously, saying it would need to study the proposals in more detail. President Ben Gill commented: "We learned from foot and mouth that animal diseases have no respect for the timetables set by lawyers.

"What we need is a quick but fair system to balance the rights of individuals with the best interests of the national herd or flock."

DEFRA ministers say the new law is necessary because, in the early days of FMD, farmers going to court held up the slaughter programme and thus helped it spread throughout the country.

More cynical observers, however, saw this as yet another attempt to shift the blame for the catastrophe onto the farmers away from officials of the now defunct MAFF, whose lack of action in the early weeks of the outbreak is believed by many to be a major cause of the wildfire spread of the disease.

Meanwhile, today marks the first clear month without a new outbreak anywhere in the UK since spring.