A 34-year-old Victorian knackery worker infected with anthrax is recovering in hospital after handling cattle carcasses affected with the bacteria.

In the first case in the state for 10 years, the man was diagnosed with a skin infection from anthrax early last week.

Over the past few weeks, 25 cattle have been affected with the disease on four farms in the Stanhope area in the state’s north.

The state’s chief veterinary officer Hugh Millar was quick to allay fears over the potentially deadly disease.

Dr Millar said the bacteria has existed in Australia for the past 150 years and incidents commonly occurred in warmer months when cattle forage deeper into the soil.

“This is an incident which is, from our point of view, routine,” Dr Millar said.

“We have sporadic incidents like this once or twice a year every year.

“Fortunately naturally occurring anthrax in animals is quite a simple thing to contain.”

Dr Millar said the cattle sent to the Stanhope knackery, where the worker was infected, were not known to be affected with the disease when they were despatched there.

However, Dr Millar acknowledged there had been cases of affected cattle in the Stanhope area before the worker was infected with anthrax.

A Department of Human Services spokesman said the last case of anthrax in a human was in Tatura in February 1997.

The afflicted knackery worker is being treated in hospital with an antibiotic drip where he is expected to make a full recovery.

A VICTORIAN man who today won a $2.75 million settlement from building materials manufacturer James Hardie labelled the company as cowards who had left him to die in the gutter.

Tim Lacone, 58, is dying from mesothelioma contracted when he used asbestos sheeting in building works at his property at Gruyere, east of Melbourne, between 1967 and 1974.

Mr Lacone had sued the asbestos manufacturer Amaca, formerly James Hardie, and the product’s distributor, Seltsam, formerly Wunderlich, for damages.

“James Hardie is a gutless, cowardly company that ran away from this country like a hit-and-run driver who ran away from maybe your loved one and left them dying a hideous death in the gutter,” Mr Lacone said.

The defendants reached an out-of-court settlement with Mr Lacone after a Victorian Supreme Court jury heard he stood to make $50 million from a revolutionary water filtration system.

Victorian police are preparing a report for the coroner after a man was found dead on a farm in the north-west of the state.Police say the 67-year-old went to check a pump in a channel of water on the Swan Hill property last night about 8:15pm AEDT.When he did not return, his son went to look for him and found him face down in about 30 centimetres of water.

WorkSafe is overseeing the investigation.