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The British livestock industry showed considerable resilience following prior foot and mouth outbreaks. The adverse economic situation of the industry prior to the current outbreak and its sheer scale mean that particularly in less favoured area where the outbreak was most severe, the industry may be permanently scarred. A recently published government review implicitly confirmed this. (660 words).

Close to six million animals have been culled directly or indirectly as a result of the outbreak, about 13.5 percent of the total UK livestock population at December 1, 2000 of 44.4 million head. Of these 1.3 million were on infected farms, 2.6 million were on nearby farms - culled for disease control, and 2.0 million were disposed of on animal welfare grounds - generally animals marooned without feed by movement restrictions.

The sheep population was most seriously implicated. Total sheep cull was about 4.7 million head, more than 17 percent of the national flock. In the county most adversely effected, Cumbria, nearly 70 percent of the sheep population of 1.3 million head was slaughtered as a direct result of foot and mouth disease measures excluding animal welfare program losses.

The direct costs to the British government, and thus British tax payers, of the outbreak is expected to exceed two billion pounds. While the government, by the way it has organized its reviews of the outbreak, has shown political nonchalance about this expenditure, farmers are likely to be more sober in assessing their future in the livestock industry.

Under normal circumstances it might be reasonable to assume that those who lost livestock, but received compensation, would restock and get back into business at the earliest opportunity. In the case of sheep farmers in particular their land resource has little other value than for grazing.

The demand for replacement stock might result in costs being higher than they would otherwise be, but this in turn should result in improved supplies as naturally occurs in the expansion phase of a conventional livestock production cycle. In a detached context the combination of compensation and market forces might be expected to heal the wound.

But the situation faced by the livestock industry is anything but normal. The wound is deep and the industry was sick before the injury. Since 1989, the UK livestock population has declined by 30 percent, an average of 1.8 million head a year. Last year 3.6 million head were simply lost to economic conditions without compensation.

After more than a decade of generally adverse economic conditions and, particularly, in the case of less favoured hill areas dependence on government aid for economic survival, restocking will not be a decision taken lightly by farmers. The very evident lack of government commitment to agriculture must also surely be on the minds of most farmers.

The livestock industry is, therefore, less likely to show the resilience that it showed following previous foot and mouth outbreaks.

Clearly younger farmers with better resources will be more inclined to continue than those less adequately endowed. It is inevitable that some regions with less favourable resources and most adversely affected by the outbreak will be scarred for some time if not permanently.

It was probably with this reality in mind that Prime Minister Tony Blair asked Lord Haskins "to look at the problems being encountered by the Cumbrian rural economy." Lord Haskins, chairman of Northern Foods, one of Britain's larger food processors, and reportedly a long-standing confidant of the Prime Minister, got off to a very shaky start by expressing his personal views on the issue before any consultations. For this he was roundly criticized.

Having hobbled himself, it was to be expected that his report, published at the beginning of November, would not contain much of significance. He surely listed, dispersed with appropriate platitudes, the need for continuing various existing government and private sector initiatives.

Anything but assuring, however, was a summarizing comment that: "But for further substantial recovery and change to be achieved, the current position will need to be more favourable..."

November 8, 2001