UK farmers' plea for relief from New Zealand lamb

LONDON - New Zealand has been asked to pull its lamb out of Britain by farmers under financial stress because of foot-and-mouth disease.

National Sheep Association chief executive John Thorley and Meat New Zealand general manager (Europe) Tim Ritchie are understood to have talked in London last week.

But, while Mr Thorley said his New Zealand counterpart had made a "tentative agreement" to switch lamb exports from Britain to mainland Europe later this year, Mr Ritchie said there was no such deal.

Because of foot-and-mouth disease, British farmers are unable to export to the European Union, so they must sell domestically.

New Zealand sent about 140,000 tonnes of lamb to Britain annually, Mr Thorley said in the Glasgow Herald newspaper.

"We said to the Kiwis: 'Is there any way that you can take your product and sell it into Europe for the time being?"' he said.

"If that happened, there would be a reasonable degree of balance and we would have that market for our own lamb. There is a degree of good sense in that. The good news is that we have had a tentative agreement from the New Zealanders that they will play that game."

Mr Ritchie, who is based in Belgium, said: "We are not sitting back and saying we are going to take a certain volume off the UK market. What we are saying is that the commercial imperative will encourage the product to flow to where it is returning the most."

If there was excess supply in the British market, lamb would fetch better prices elsewhere, but there were many complicating factors, he said. It was not known how long foot-and-mouth would last or what the British slaughter rate would be.

Since foot-and-mouth broke out, New Zealand importers had had to play a balancing act. They had to get good prices for their growers without being seen to take advantage of the plight of British farmers.

New Zealand supplies would ease later this year as the killing season ended, Mr Ritchie said.

Meat New Zealand stopped its advertising in Britain in February, saying its clean, green message was insensitive at a time British farmers faced ruin.

- NZPA

Herald Online feature: Foot-and-mouth disaster

World organisation for animal health

UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food

The European Commission for the Control of Foot-and-Mouth Disease

Pig Health/Foot and Mouth feature

Virus databases online