Industry welcomes stock movement plan

By James Garner

MAFFS proposal to allow some animals to be moved off farms to abattoirs or holding areas under strictly licensed conditions has been universally welcomed by the industry.

Further details of the scheme were likely to be announced on Friday (02 March).

Farm minister Nick Brown said on Wednesday (28 February) that a scheme to market animals under strict control was taking shape.

MAFF would not comment further.

But the logistics of moving animals safely around the country without spreading the disease were discussed, with the final decision on how to implement this falling to chief vet officer, Jim Scudamore.

Peter Scott, director of the British Meat Federation, said the aim was to try and establish normal trading patterns, with prices paid for stock determined via competition.

“Abattoirs will be running out of pigmeat now and lamb during next week. But beef wont run out for a bit longer, because of the maturation process,” he said.

With 240,000 lambs, 225,000 finished pigs and about 38,000 cattle a week backing up on farms throughout the country, all sectors have expressed a need to act swiftly to relieve pressure.

But all parties involved in industry meetings with government maintained the first priority must be to eradicate the disease.

Jim Walker, president of the National Farmers Union of Scotland, said: “It would be impossible to contemplate lorries picking animals up from a number of farms, because of the risk of spreading the disease, so movements would have to be direct from a single farm to a single abattoir.”

This conflicts with other groups who are strongly in favour of using auction markets as collection points carefully monitored by MAFF, as in the last outbreak of the disease in 1967.

The LAAs chairman, Peter Kingwill, said the decision should recognise the way the countryside works.

“While pigs may be sold mainly deadweight, it is more difficult for cattle and sheep. This will mean horrendous amounts of lorries moving around the country.”

The NBAs chief executive, Robert Forster, was concerned that abattoirs did not have the necessary facilities to wash and disinfect lorries, unlike auction markets, and that only the biggest abattoirs would be chosen.