Foot-and-mouth disease is costing British farmers more than 50 million pounds a week, and the total bill to the economy could top 2.6 billion pounds (4.1 billion euros, 3.8 billion dollars), experts said on Tuesday two weeks after the disease was diagnosed.
The losses arising from an export ban, the slaughter of tens of thousands of animals, the deterioration of stock quality and the resultant market chaos, runs to more than 50 million pounds every week, said experts from the National Farmers Union and the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR).
When other knock-on effects such as the cost to hauliers, abattoirs, others in the supply chain, and even sporting industries are factored in, the total cost to the British economy over just a few short months is almost certain to top one billion pounds, the CEBR said.
"For the economy as a whole it's small potatoes but if you are in that sector you are going to get killed," CEBR senior economist Paul Crawford told AFP.
"The worst-case scenario -- a period of five months containment plus an extra month for disinfection and restocking -- is 2.6 billion pounds," he said. "Our best case scenario was three-month containment and disinfection which is 0.9 billion pounds."
The foot-and-mouth outbreak has now spread to 74 British farms and abattoirs, bringing iron controls down on beleaguered farmers still recovering from the mad-cow crisis.
More than 70,000 animals have now either been destroyed or are earmarked for culling, while movement of livestock is severely restricted.
Farmers gained some respite on Monday when some uninfected beasts were allowed to be transported to abattoirs, but economists say the financial relief from such moves will be minimal.
Farming hopes were also raised on Tuesday when British veterinary experts said the outbreak should peak this week.
But economists still expect lengthy containment periods to ensure that the disease is stamped out altogether.
The NFU predicted that farms would lose some 288 million pounds if the crisis drags on for three months. Its total cost to agriculture and the rest of the supply chain over a three-month period was 776 million pounds.
"When these losses are set against the stark fact that farm incomes fell by over two thirds over the last five years to just 5,200 pounds... the picture becomes bleaker still," said NFU president Ben Gill.
The prime cost is the export ban, expected to last several weeks if not months, which the NFU said was costing 12 million pounds every week to lamb, pig and dairy producers.
The crisis has also had dramatic implications for the value of livestock and the costs of keeping them beyond their usual "sell-by date.” The NFU put these costs at more than two million pounds a week.
Loss of income from farm bed and breakfast businesses and shops could top another seven million pounds a week, the NFU said -- and this before any broader costs to other industries dependent on agriculture are factored in.
The government has promised compensation, already earmarking some 150 million pounds for the worst hit, but animal husbandry experts argue that monetary compensation never fully restores a farmer's loss.
"Even if you give a farmer a check to buy all the cows he just lost, he is not going to buy in one go cows as good as the herd he put together over several years," said Francois Ortalo-Magne, a lecturer at the London School of Economics.
But to believe some, the farmers are by no means the worst affected. Further a field in the stricken abattoirs and food processing plants, hundreds of employees have seen work dry up and face possible redundancy, according to the GMB union.
"Whilst farmers are being promised hundreds of millions of pounds in compensation, other workers are being forced to survive on 16.70 pounds a day for the first five days they are off work," said GMB spokesman Dan Hodges.
"This is not a farming crisis, it is an industrial crisis and these workers cannot simply be abandoned," he said -- LONDON (AFP)
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