Cash to help dispose of fallen sheep after winter

THE sheep sector is to receive £200,000 in emergency aid to help dispose of the thousands of animals that died during the severe winter weather.

Details on how the cash, announced by the Scottish Government yesterday, is to be used have still to be worked out.

The number of sheep lost is not yet clear but estimates have suggest that some 15,000 ewes may have perished.

The official collector of dead livestock in Scotland is picking up 25 per cent more dead sheep than in a normal lambing period.

Christopher Murphy, from Douglasbrae, Keith, said his 50 lorries that cover Scotland had been much busier than normal.

Farmers within the collection area, which includes all but the more remote parts of the Highlands and Islands, pay up to 15 per ewe to dispose of fallen animals safely. So far, the bill has been put at 163,000 above that for the same period last year.

Announcing the emergency cash, Richard Lochhead, Cabinet secretary for rural affairs, said the "increasingly tight constraints on government finances" limited the assistance he could provide. "I do hope that our latest aid package will go some way to help cover the additional costs of disposing of fallen livestock where burial is not an option," he said.

"The impact on individual sheep farmers has been variable and this funding will be targeted as those with the highest losses."

He appealed to local authorities who oversee the disposal of fallen stock to be as flexible as possible, allowing farmers to focus their immediate efforts on lambing and caring for ewes in poor condition.

News of the cash was welcomed by Jimmy Sinclair, National Sheep Association Scottish chairman, and by

NFU Scotland president Jim McLaren, who said the cash was recognition by the government of the hardship faced by many producers throughout one of the worst winters in living memory.

Yesterday SNP MEP Alyn Smith revealed he had written to EU Budgets Commissioner Janusz Lewandowski seeking access to approximately 10 million out of the 200 million EU emergency fund on behalf of Scotland's sheep farmers.

"The fund exists under the EU's flexibility instrument and as such stands alone from any other EU budget, and is available at relatively short notice for areas or industries suffering unexpected difficulty."

The fund has previously helped Latvian textile manufacturers and German car manufacturers, and regions hit by earthquakes and forest fires.

Mr Smith said: "The flexibility instrument will need to be accessed via a request from the UK minister. However, with Whitehall paralysed I'm not going to hang about, and have raised this with the commissioner myself, and we can sketch in the details of the application later."