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Survivor faces death again
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THEY called her Phoenix, but her rise from the ashes may well be a brief one.
A week-old calf was found nestling alongside her dead mother under a pile of animals slaughtered under the foot-and-mouth cull policy. She had survived for five days and was starving, shivering and dehydrated.
Michaela Board, who runs Clarence Farm at Membury in east Devon, bottle-fed and nursed her back to health, and is now struggling to persuade the Ministry of Agriculture to let Phoenix live.
Mrs Board's herd had been condemned because of a case of foot-and-mouth at a neighbouring farm. Phoenix had been sedated along with more than 70 healthy cattle and sheep before the killing began, but somehow she escaped the fatal bullet. She was found when workmen arrived to disinfect the carcasses.
Mrs Board said: "Phoenix was hungry and very thirsty and traumatised. I am very angry it was left like that. If a farmer treated their stock like that everyone would be up in arms saying it was cruel.
"The slaughtermen missed the calf and as a result it has suffered greatly. The calf is healthy and I want it to live."
But MAFF officials who arrived at the farm accompanied by police last night were adamant that the death sentence had to be carried out. A spokeswoman said: "If we make an exception for this calf we will have to make an exception for every pet lamb and pet cow and it would make a mockery of our policy."
The Boards allowed MAFF officials to inspect the calf and afterwards Mrs Board said that they had gone away to discuss what to do. "But we are determined not to let them do anything to her. They had their chance once and messed it up. We won't give them the chance again."
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