BEFORE the foot-and-mouth crisis struck the county, the Cumbrian Fellbred label was going great guns.

According to Richard Morris, managing director of Penrith Farmer's and Kidd's, the auction company at the heart of the scheme, the Fellbred brand was really taking off after its official launch last year.

Cumbrian Fellbred was dreamed up in the wake of the BSE crisis and the fears that infected beef could cause an epidemic of the human form of the condition, Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD).

The devastation of Cumbrian farming has inevitably raised the question in some minds: 'How was Fellbred getting enough genuinely Cumbrian meat during a crisis which has seen more than one million of the county's livestock slaughtered?'

Keen to lay to rest any question about the provenance of the brand's products, Mr Morris said: 'We did not go outside of the county.

There was no need.'

He explained that Cumbria was one of the country's principle livestock producing counties, and, although many farms had been lost, many yet remained.

Getting licences to move animals to slaughter was a problem, but not an insurmountable one.

He said that being Cumbrian was the raison d'etre for the Fellbred scheme and he was adamant that all Fellbred meat was sourced from within the county.

In spite of all the recent set-backs, Mr Morris is confident that the brand will recover and continue to grow.

'Foot-and-mouth could not have been worse in as much as we have lost the momentum the TV campaign and all the rest of the marketing had built up,' he said.

'But at the end of it all the public may have a better awareness of local food and that will stand us in good stead.'

Nor is he worried that the crisis will damage the image and reputation of Cumbria and its stock in the long term.

'We have

never heard of anyone not wanting it because of the foot-and-mouth in the county,' he said.

'People will always want good quality meat.'