Pig farmer is tagged for failure to report foot-and-mouth

The pig breeder whose farm is believed to have been the source of last year's foot-and-mouth outbreak was placed under an overnight curfew enforced by electronic tagging yesterday as punishment for failing to reveal the disease's presence in his animals.

The tag will confine Bobby Waugh, 56, to his two-bedroom terraced house in Sunderland between 7pm and 8am for three months. He was banned from keeping farm animals for 15 years on the orders of a district judge at south-east Northumberland magistrates' court.

At the end of a three-week criminal trial, the judge, James Prowse, had convicted him last month of animal cruelty and failing to reveal the presence of foot-and-mouth. Mr Prowse told Waugh yesterday he could have been jailed for the animal cruelty offences.

The judge said he had reminded himself during the case that Waugh was not standing trial for being the source of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. "You are not to be a scapegoat for what happened after,'' he said.

"But I am going to impose a curfew order with electronic monitoring,'' he told Waugh. "It is a form of house arrest but on the other hand it does not take all your liberty away.''

The farmer was also given six months to pay £10,000 to the £90,000 prosecution costs of Northumberland County Council, whose trading standards department brought the case.