BUCKS County Council has agreed to allow up to 150 lorry loads of dead animals a week to be buried at one of its waste disposal sites to help ease the country's foot and mouth disease crisis.

The council has responded to pressure from the Government to bury carcasses from a wider area at Calvert waste disposal site in the north of the county.

On Friday the members of the development control committee agreed to relax the rules after the council had been told it was in the country's interest that it helped handle the large numbers of animals killed.

The new rules mean that dead animals can be brought into the site, though none will have foot and mouth disease.

Almost all are expected to be animals killed under the Animal Welfare Scheme because they were sick or the farmer could not keep them.

Other carcasses might be animals killed on farms in infected areas to prevent the spread of the disease. As there are no infected areas nearby and dead animals killed in this way are supposed to go to the nearest site, it's unlikely they any will come to Calvert unless there is a new outbreak of the disease.

Councillors agreed to relax the rules with reluctance and made it clear that dead animals must be brought in in clean, disinfected, leakproof, covered vehicles. Site owners Shanks will have to provide a weekly report on what animals come in and precisely where they are buried.

Shanks recently apologised to the council for allowing about 350 dead sheep to be buried at Calvert on April 18, before Bucks County Council relaxed the rules.

They were all ewes and year-old lambs which could not be moved alive from their farms and which could not be sold.

Shanks said it accepted the carcasses in response to orders from MAFF as a result of the foot and mouth crisis.