A TEDDY bear sparked a bio terrorism scare after a postal worker thought the parcel it was in contained a batch of anthrax.

The incident resulted in the Bank Parade sorting office in Burnley being evacuated for two and a half hours.

Now an investigation has been launched after the fire brigade and the council leader said the strict emergency system for suspected terrorist parcels broke down.

But the Royal Mail today insisted strict security guidelines were followed.

The office was evacuated at 11.30am yesterday -- three hours after the parcel containing the brown-coloured late Christmas present was found leaking a powder.

Investigators initially thought it was the teddy bear package that was contaminated and contacted the embarrassed sender, a a pensioner from the Fylde. But further investigations revealed the powder was coming from an A4 size envelope containing a circular leaflet and had been spilt before the letter was posted.

Sub Officer Nigel Clark, of Burnley fire station, has slammed the sorting office's procedure as a "shambles."

He said: "We were contacted three hours after the powder was found which is not the way the system works. This powder could have been anthrax which could have turned into a national disaster.

"The fire service, the police and the health and safety executive have called an urgent meeting to find out why procedures were not followed, which we are taking very seriously."

Stuart Caddy, Burnley Council leader and a postman, added his concern: "I am going to take this up with some of the senior managers at the Post Office," he said.

"There are some tight procedures in place. Last time we had a scare we had to evacuate the building straight away but that doesn't seem to have happened."

The office was cordoned off while firefighters wearing gas-tight suits retrieved the package leaking what was then an unknown powder substance.

A team of police forensic examiners was called to analyse the package which contained the cuddly toy before revealing it was "anti static powder".

All the people involved in the recovery of the packages were later de-contaminated in a shower which fires jets of water to dilute any chemicals on the body.

A spokeswoman for Royal Mail said: "We are not aware at this time of any investigations that may have been launched but as far as we are concerned everything was followed to the correct standard and was dealt with promptly."

A police spokesman said: "The scenes of crimes officers made contact with the sender of the cuddly toy which turned out to be harmless. The sender was rather embarrassed about the situation but the important thing is that the powder did turn out to be harmless."