When Wexford farmer Frank Brownrigge found the gates of the Irish Country Meats plant in Camolin locked on Tuesday he was struck by one fear: that foot-and-mouth disease might have turned up in a farm near his own.
He "never dreamt", he said yesterday, that the suspect lamb which had caused the alert could have come from a batch he had delivered to the factory earlier the same day. News that it had was broken to him by factory management in the same way one tells someone of a death in their family.
Mr Brownrigge's car and trailer were immediately impounded and he found himself plunged into a two-day nightmare which ended yesterday when preliminary results from Britain indicated the animal did not have foot-and-mouth.
Married with two daughters and a son born last week, Mr Brownrigge says he could not have coped with the news that foot-and-mouth had entered his farm.
Yesterday was the second anniversary of the day his cattle were destroyed after an outbreak of BSE. "I was just getting back on my feet and this would have been too much to bear."
Mr Brownrigge was given a lift home from the meat plant to find three Department of Agriculture officials in protective clothing already at his house. He was unable to bring himself to ring neighbouring farmers whose livelihoods would have been affected as badly as his own had the outbreak been confirmed.
After two sleepless nights, however, the nightmare ended at 11 a.m. yesterday when he received a phone call to tell him the test result was negative.
Mr Adrian King, the IFA's regional organiser in Wexford, said he was confident of a similar result today from preliminary tests on three sheep found to have mouth lesions at the Slaney Meats plant in Clohamon, Bunclody, on Wednesday. The sheep came from the Gowran area of Co Kilkenny. Confirmation of the results usually follows within two days.
Mr King said the damage a foot-and-mouth outbreak in Wexford would cause to the county was "inconceivable".
Wexford was more dependent on agriculture than any other county, and 55 per cent of its workforce was in jobs directly or indirectly dependent on the sector, he said. The county has 3,500 livestock farmers.
