Vegetarian foot-and-mouth opinions in The Argus suggest the UK urgently needs a freedom of information act, even if opposed by the European Union.

Through freedom of information, we now know the United States Defense Department has on its list of potential weapons of terrorism - for crippling Western economies - livestock and plant pathogenes which include, in addition to foot-and-mouth disease, soya-bean rust, anthrax spores, rinderpest, classical and African swine fever, sheep and goat pox, Newcastle disease, karnal bunt in wheat, ergot in sorghum and Wirrega blotch in barley and so on.

UK secrecy laws deny the public information on increased long-haul food imports and genetically modified food displacing safer, traditional home-grown food.

-John Stanaway, Lorna Road, Hove