British farming industry 'facing months of torture'

Britain's farming industry faces months of torture as the toll from foot-and-mouth disease continues to rise.

NFU president Ben Gill says the key objective for farmers is to wipe out the disease but he warned that parts of the countryside would be "idle" for the next six months.

Mass slaughters will change the character of rural Britain for many months after the disease has gone, he told a news conference at NFU headquarters in London.

He spoke shortly after it was announced that the number of outbreaks now stands at 252 with the latest confirmed at a farm in Llanelwedd, next to the Royal Welsh Agricultural showground near Builth Wells in Powys.

Mr Gill said farmers were facing the torture of seeing their herds wiped out and not knowing where the disease would strike next, or if their businesses would survive.

He said: "That torture was compounded yesterday by mistakes made at the Ministry of Agriculture."

The union leader said that Britain's Agriculture Minister Nick Brown's statement to the Commons was vague and a later press briefing had included cattle in the three kilometre-wide slaughter zones announced for Cumbria and Dumfries and Galloway.

That mistake caused mass confusion for farmers and Mr Gill called on the Government to put extra resources into explaining the details of its policy to farmers.

He said work would be needed once the outbreak was controlled to trace how it had reached Britain and ensure that it never happened again.

He said it could be premature to open up parts of the countryside which were deemed to be "clean" of the disease.