WATERBORO (AP) – A fly that feeds of rotting flesh and cheese has infested this southwestern Maine town after a Massachusetts company left about 40 tons of rotting animal hides at an abandoned tannery building.

State agencies are considering whether to incinerate or bury the rotting animal hides that allowed a burgeoning population of corpse flies, which also are called cheese skippers because of the way its larvae move.

Waterboro’s code officer Patti Berry said she discovered the source of the flies at a building belonging to Boston Hides and Fur. About 100 pallets of rotting cow hides were stored in the building.

The town was unaware the tannery was storing hides in the building, Berry said, and it appeared the tannery had been stockpiling hides since last fall.

Though the flies can be a health risk because they spread disease, there was no indication that anyone was endangered by the infestation, Berry said. Last week the pallets of hides were fumigated, wrapped in plastic, and placed on two refrigerated trucks at the tannery, said Anthony Andreottola of Boston Hides. But the question remains of what to do with them now.

The state Bureau of Health favored incinerating the skins, said Philip Haines, the agency’s deputy director. The Maine Department of Environmental Protection urged burying the offal in a landfill, and there is still a possibility the hides will reach their original destination, a glue factory.

Because the wet hides could not be burned all at once, they would require complicated handling within an incinerator, said Paula Clark with the state environmental department, which favors burying the hides in a landfill.

The state has left the issue of disposal to Waterboro officials, Berry said.

She added that Adreottola is still interested in shipping the hides to Massachusetts to be made into glue.

Clark said it was not yet clear if state fines would result from the storage of hides that led to the fly outbreak.

AP-ES-08-18-04 1036EDT