The announcement immediately drew fierce criticism from both farming leaders and the political opposition who accused the government of a cover-up.

The inquiries will be on the lessons to be learned from the outbreak and future handling of a major epidemic in livestock: a scientific review; and a commission on the future of farming and food. Each of the inquiries will be headed by government-appointed chairman who will report their findings only. Except for some public sessions in those parts of the country badly hit by the disease, none of the evidence will be made public.

Paul Tyler, the Liberal Democrat spokesman said it was ‘outrageous’ that the government would be investigating itself. Tim Yeo, the Tory agriculture spokesman, said that only a full public inquiry, held in the open, would ensure "that the full facts of Labour’s initial dithering have been uncovered and properly scrutinised." The inquiries bring the total number of investigations of various types into the epidemic to ten.

The controversy was fuelled by comments made by the various government ministers during the week. In a letter to a constituent, junior DEFRA (Department of the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) minister Elliot Morley branded farmers "a pretty ungrateful lot", while the government's rural recovery co-ordinator, Lord Haskins, said farmers whose stock had been culled had suffered ‘more emotionally than financially.’

DEFRA is the new name for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food – the government department that has been responsible for the handling of the foot and mouth disease epidemic.

In an interview with a Sunday newspaper, Lord Haskins claimed farmers who had been compensated were better off than those who avoided the virus. "The people who have economically come out of it have been the farmers who have had foot and mouth," he said. "They have got payments….the people who have been most affected are farmers in the restricted areas who haven’t had foot and mouth and who can’t move their stock."

Referring to reports that some farmers had deliberately infected stock in order to claim compensation, the minister said "there was lots of speculation" that farmers had recognised this and acted accordingly. Asked if he thought this had happened, he replied: "You say that, I can’t."

The ministers’ comments did little to placate farming leaders who had already accused the government of attempting to distract attention from its failure to control the disease by smearing farmers through stories of profiteering and fraud.

The inquiry announcement came as a leading scientist predicted that numbers of foot-and-mouth cases in the UK could double to nearly 4000 outbreaks. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College said that the epidemic remains delicately balanced and could worsen dramatically as winter approaches.

Citing the findings of a mathematical model produced by his team, Prof. Ferguson said: "If we relax biosecurity, movement restrictions or the cull, we will see a significant resurgence." Fears for a come-back of the disease were also rising in Cumbria. Farmers say that in the absence of government testing, they have no way of knowing whether the sheep they are now bringing down from the high fells for the winter are infected with the disease. If they are, the likely result will be a new round of outbreaks in an area that has already been badly hit, the farmers say.