1.3m unwanted British lambs bound for slaughter

LONDON - Britain is sticking by its pledge to slaughter 1.3 million healthy mountain lambs unable to go to market because of foot-and-mouth disease restrictions and says it is time to wean the sheep industry off subsidies.

The Food and Farming Minister, Lord Whitty, told sheep farmers that after the livestock epidemic died out they would have to give up production subsidies and payments per head in what would be a radical overhaul of the industry.

"There will be no straightforward return to any 'normality'. Sheep farming will have to change," Whitty said.

"In the long term, support from Government and from the EU cannot be based on headage payments and production subsidies. The public interest is twofold: ensuring a competitive and healthy sheep sector ... and ensuring environmental objectives for our flocks and landscape."

The newly named Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has often signalled its determination to move away from production subsidies and towards payments to farmers for protecting the environment for the tourist industry.

It hopes to reduce sheep stocks, particularly in the uplands, which have been blamed for hurting the environment by overgrazing and for creating a huge surplus of hill lambs.

More than a million mountain lambs, mainly from Wales, Cumbria in northwestern England and Devon in the southwest, will be slaughtered between now and Christmas as their traditional markets in Europe remain closed, Whitty said.

Leading British supermarkets have said they would stock the lamb, but Government ministers fear there are too many animals to eat.

The Asda supermarket chain yesterday unveiled a £3 million ($10.5 million) package to sell the lamb next week at lower prices.

The Government's move will no doubt anger the farming industry, already badly hit by the foot and mouth epidemic that has led to the slaughter of more than 3.6 million animals on almost 2000 farms.

But Whitty said the Government was not bent on wiping out the sheep industry, only on modifying it so that the taxpayer would not have to pay huge amounts of money when the industry reached its next crisis.

Defra has already spent about £1.2 billion on combating the highly infectious livestock disease and has forecast that the total bill will rise to £2.3 billion.

"The Government is committed to eradicating this disease and we are committed to these costs," Whitty said. "But we must change this system for the future.

"I am in the construction, not the demolition, business; we are here to build a sustainable industry for the future, not destroy it."

- REUTERS

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