FIGURES showing that hundreds of thousands of cattle slaughtered in the foot and mouth cull did not in fact have the disease threw a massive bombshell into the election campaign.

MAFF admits that almost a third of animals killed as suspect cases were in fact clear of the disease but insist that their deaths were necessary to prevent further spread.

When healthy cattle culled as known precautionary measures are added to these figures, something like 500,000 healthy animals died, devastating hundreds of farms and adding hundreds of millions to the tax payers' compensation bills.

The figures were seized upon eagerly by opposition politicians as ammunition against the Government but the NFU remained pragmatic. It was inevitable that "innocent" livestock had to die if epidemic were to be contained, it said. This is a view not likely to appease members who have lost healthy livestock.