The second wave of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Surrey is likely to have been caused by contaminated soil from the Government’s Pirbright scientific research laboratory, an official inquiry has been told.

It is alleged that contractors working on the £121 million modernisation programme at the laboratory collected soil contaminated with live virus at the site and sold it as top soil.

Some of this was spread on land next to a farm where animals were later identified with the disease.

A review of the 2007 Surrey outbreak conducted by Iain Anderson – who headed the inquiry into lessons learnt after the world’s worst foot-and-mouth epidemic, in Britain in 2001 – has heard evidence from a number of people, including private veterinary surgeons, who are convinced that this was the reason for the disease’s resurgence.

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A spokesman for the inquiry confirmed last night that a number of people living locally had given evidence to this effect during interviews.

The allegations, if proven, will bring new embarrassment to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Under government guidelines, waste from any site dealing with live disease viruses requires a disposal licence from the Environment Agency, but Defra, which took charge of the modernisation works at the laboratory, appears to have overlooked the need for such a licence in this case.

The name of the contractors has not been disclosed for security reasons. Firms that have contracts with scientific research centres have frequently become targets for animal rights extremists.

Dr Anderson’s inquiry, however, was told that contractors used the soil as “a cash crop” rather than paying for its disposal in a landfill site.

Top soil is sold for £10 a cubic yard and a lorryload would be enough for 20 cu yards or £200. The cost of dumping in a landfill site would be £2 per cu yard for inert soil or £40 for 20 cu yards.

But given that the Pirbright laboratory was handling live virus and there was potential for hazardous waste, the landfill charge should have been at least £24/cu yard or £480 for 20 cu yards.

A full investigation into the disease trail from the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Surrey is being conducted by veterinary epidemiologists, and the latest claims are part of the new inquiry.

It is being alleged that infected top soil caused the resurgence of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in September four days after Debby Reynolds, the former Chief Veterinary Officer, declared Britain free of the disease and the August outbreak over.

The pattern of cases suggests that this last outbreak in Surrey, on the 20-acre farm known as the Klondyke, at Virginia Water, owned by John and Sally Hepplethwaite, was linked to infected top soil spread on land adjacent to their holding.

Lesions on their animals were ten to fourteen days older than disease first spotted in an earlier wave of the outbreak. The alarm over the last outbreak in September was in cattle owned by Robert Lawrence, of Lyne, Chertsey.

Defra has come in for more criticism from a separate review of the licensing arrangements at Pirbright by Sir William Callaghan, a former chairman of the Health and Safety Commission. Today he will recommend stripping Defra of its inspection role at the laboratory and others which deal in dangerous animal pathogens.

Instead the Health and Safety Executive, which already has responsibility for establishments handling deadly human pathogens, will take on the inspection of these sites, in a move approved by Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary. Defra was criticised in initial findings about the state of facilities at Pirbright. There was no comment from Defra last night.

A spokesman for Surrey County Council trading standards, which is the enforcement authority for breaches of health and safety at the site, said that its inquiries were continuing and a decision on any prosecution would be made in the new year.

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