ARMY logistic troops were today beginning the grisly task of burying up to 200,000 sheep carcasses on an airfield at Great Orton, near Carlisle - a figure which could eventually reach half a million.

The arrival of troops was greeted with great relief by affected farmers, some of whom had been forced to live with the distress of having their dead livestock lying rotting in their fields for up to six days.

The army is said to have been called in on the direct orders of Prime Minister Tony Blair who, it is reported to today, is growing "very irritated" by the lack lustre performance of the Ministry of Agriculture since the beginning of the epidemic.

A special cabinet committee, COBRA, involving senior ministers not normally involved with MAFF policy, has also been set up to take control over the emergency - although Mr Blair is still said to be keen to go ahead with a general election on May 34.

Confirmed outbreaks soared past the 600 mark over the weekend - including a third case near Queensbury, West Yorkshire and four more in Wensleydale near Hawes. Work on slaughtering and removing carcasses in the Hawes outbreak had to be halted because the rendering plant in Cheshire handling the dead animals could not cope with the numbers involved.

Other developments over the weekend included:

• Sunday was Lady's Day, when tenant farmers were due to pay their rents. The Archbishop of Canterbury issued instructions that church authorities listen sympathetically to the problems of tenants on several hundred farms owned by the Church of England.

• MAFF is considering a total ban on the feeding of swill to pigs - a practice which has been going on ever since man domesticated wild pigs. The swill is supposed to be heat treated before being fed to animals. It has been suggested that the first outbreak in Northumbria was caused by contaminated swill but, so far, this has not been officially confirmed.