Carwyn Jones, rural affairs minister in the Welsh assembly, has called for more powers to be devolved from London.

In the wake of the foot and mouth crisis, Jones indicated that improvements could be made in the way ministers in London and Cardiff work together, and repeated his long-standing belief that devolution has created significant anomalies in the way rural affairs matters in Wales are now handled.

His comments came as Welsh farmers representatives criticised the way the foot and mouth outbreak had been dealt with, and also called for the assembly to be given more control over future actions.

The NFU Cymru report says the outbreak could have been eradicated sooner if decisions had been taken in Cardiff rather than London. It also condemns the use of pyres for the destruction of slaughtered animals and calls for more research on vaccinating animals against future outbreaks.

The NFU document, "Lessons that might be learned for the future", says that measures to control any future outbreaks should be co-ordinated by the assembly administration. With greater devolution, more appropriate solutions could have been found to Welsh problems such as common grazing areas, it says.

"This report highlights what lessons must be learned to prevent such a disastrous episode ever happening again," said NFU Cymru president, Hugh Richards.

"Despite animal health not being a devolved responsibility there is evidence that the Scottish parliament was, on occasion, able to exercise policies differently. We feel there should be full devolution of powers more in line with Scotland," he added.

The farmers' views have been backed by Carwyn Jones, the Welsh minister who was responsible for working with the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in London during the crisis.

Jones said the assembly cabinet would be seeking to persuade Westminster to devolve legal responsibility for agricultural affairs so Wales could make its own decisions in future.

"The difficulty was that DEFRA had the legal power and we had the staff. This anomaly was identified and next time it would be important that the assembly has the legal power to act," he is reported to have said.

He refuted suggestions that his department's relationship with DEFRA was poor but conceded that "in some cases we didn't have the opportunity to take decisions as quickly as we would have liked."

Jones has previously described the powers of the Welsh assembly as "far from perfect". He has predicted that the devolution settlement will have to be re-visited, and has described "tremendous anomalies that will need to be ironed out".

He has cited as examples fisheries, where inner waters are a devolved matter while the outer limits of British territory are a DEFRA responsibility, and animal health, which is also a DEFRA responsibility in Wales, even though the ministry has no staff in Wales because they have all been transferred to the assembly.