LOOK at the flower-dotted fields around Ash Moor now and the last thing they're likely to remind anyone of is the foot-and-mouth crisis of 2001.

But as someone whose work as a reporter on the Western Morning News brought me into regular contact with North Devon's farmers, the name Ash Moor is a grim reminder of the blight foot-and-mouth spread across the whole of our region.

Amid all the confusion of changing policies from a Government which was desperate to get on with a General Election, Ash Moor was seized on as one way of dealing with one of the most intractable problems of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

In striving to stop the spread of the disease, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) — which later became Defra — operated a policy of not only slaughtering cattle believed to be infected with the disease but also animals from nearby farms.

And so the word "contiguous" entered my working vocabulary. In simple terms the word means "touching, in contact, near or adjacent". For farmers in North Devon and anywhere the dread disease was discovered, the word almost always meant death for their animals and untold misery for the farmers, their families and the communities in which they lived.

The inevitable consequence of the slaughtering policy was that there were thousands upon thousands of animal carcases requiring disposal.

Newspapers were filled with gruesome images of the carcasses piled high, waiting for someone to come up with a workable means of dealing with them.

And that was when the Government's focus fell on Ash Moor. An area not far from Peters Marland was singled out as being suitable for a massive burial pit.

In basic terms, the idea was that carcasses of slaughtered animals would be buried on an industrial scale in lined cells.

Cabinet Office papers reveal that initially the idea was that as many as 350,000 carcasses could be disposed of on about 100 acres of land near the clay workings at Meeth. Those same papers also reveal that the figure of 350,000 was subsequently revised upwards — to double that amount.

Inevitably, the move sparked opposition from local people, who feared that the proposal — in conjunction with the direct impact of foot-and-mouth disease — would deal their area a blow from which it would never recover.

But as the crisis unfolded, it was eventually realised that what effectively would have been a mass grave for farm animals was not going to be needed.

The work done in preparation for the first burials was reversed and, as the open day has demonstrated so eloquently, Ash Moor again became a haven for wildlife. May it always remain so.