Concerns remain high over carcase disposal

THE government is expected today to offer to pay part of the cost of disposing of animals which die on farms after on-farm burial is banned next month.

But the offer by the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to unions at a meeting in London is expected to be a flat-rate annual payment based on the size of livestock operation, not per animal.

A spokesman for NFU Scotland said that farmers had no objection to paying some of the cost of off-farm disposal, estimated at about 10 million a year for Scotland, for fallen stock - animals which die of illness or by accident - but it had to be a realistic contribution.

The European Union regulation banning on-farm burial, mainly because of the danger of contaminating water courses, will take effect in England and Wales on 1 May. An extension until 15 May has been given in Scotland by Ross Finnie, minister for environment and rural development, to allow more consultation on exemption for farmers in remote areas.

Finnie has made it clear that going it alone is not an option for Scotland, but critics of the ban insist that government, on both sides of the Border, has no idea of how an off-farm disposal scheme will work or of the massive problems it will create. Theoretically, local authorities and trading standards officers will police the scheme, but of Scotland’s 32 local authorities, few have more than one dedicated livestock inspector.

Some farms, usually intensive pig businesses, have bio-digesters in which carcases decompose. Sealed ones will be acceptable, but open pits, such as the traditional lambing time "dead hole" will not.

Even fewer farms have incinerators and of these most are small, dealing with less than 50 kilos an hour of dead animal.

John Kinnaird, NFU Scotland president, said: "Defra has talked of 30 million for a British scheme. That money is already taken up by existing BSE control and monitoring schemes and the fallen stock TSE [transmissible spongiform encephalopathy] surveillance scheme. We’ve had no breakdown of how this 30 million would go anywhere near covering a GB scheme."

Farmers with extensive hill and moor have pointed out that the main problem is not getting a dead animal from farm steading to a disposal centre, but the carcase to the steading.

Andrew George, Liberal Democrat shadow rural affairs secretary, yesterday described Defra’s attempt to implement the EU ruling as "not just a fiasco waiting to happen, but a fiasco which is now bound to happen".