April 8, 2004

UK Livestock Industry Not Recovered From Foot-And-Mouth

Nearly three years on from the U.K.'s foot-and- mouth crisis that devastated its livestock industries, only the national beef herd has recovered to pre-2001 levels.
 
According to the U.K. Meat and Livestock Commission, or MLC, the sheep sector never completely recovered from the outbreak and will most likely remain near its current level with two million fewer breeding ewes that before the outbreak.
 
At the start of the crisis, the national breeding herd dropped to 16 million head from 18.5 million almost immediately because the outbreak's epicentre was in a sheep-dense area.
 
"But I don't know if the herd reduction has been a good or a bad thing," said Jane Connor, Senior Economic Analyst for the MLC. "There have been benefits as prices are much better for producers."
 
The national herd was restocked slightly in 2002 following the outbreak but is still at only about 16.3 million head, though according to the National Farmers Union, the 2002 value for sheep was up about GBP225 million from 2001. The value for beef was up a similar amount. Connor said the beef industry has recovered to nearly pre-outbreak levels but the losses during the outbreak were not as severe as for sheep.
 
Pork producers, however, have suffered blow after blow in the past three years as wasting diseases and a strong pound against the euro reduced U.K. pig numbers by almost 40%, according to the British Pork Executive. The 2001 foot- and-mouth crisis "just added another pressure onto an already beleaguered sector and further reduced producer confidence," Connor said.
 
The sheep industry hasn't been as affected by the exchange rate as most lamb imports come from New Zealand, she said, so the effect is minimal. Most beef imports come to the U.K. from Ireland, benefiting from a strong pound, but pork is an export commodity in the U.K. so currency issues have reduced exports while the market has become a target for imports, especially by pork- heavy countries like Denmark.
 
"The exchange rate has been a huge factor on the pork industry. FMD is really down at the bottom of the list of negative pressures over the past few years," Connor said.
 
But though pork production is down, U.K. consumption is steady at roughly 788,000 metric tons per year compared to pre-foot and mouth levels in 2000 of 740,000 tons. Lamb and beef consumption is on the rise as well, but MLC spokesman Phil Sanders worries that U.K. beef producers don't meet the demand.
 
"We're less than 70% self-sufficient in beef because of the BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or mad-cow disease) days and then later on with FMD," said Sanders.
 
Even after the BSE and foot-and-mouth crises in recent years, consumer confidence is still high, the highest in Europe according to a recent E.U.- funded study.
 
According to the "Trust in Food in Europe" study, released in December 2003, 47% of U.K. consumers trust that the beef they buy is safe and 50% say that pork is safe, which is highest among consumers in Denmark, Norway, Germany, Italy and Portugal.
 
The report said consumers continue to trust their farmers as well. "Let us notice that British consumers lean towards the middle category (of acceptance), even after several food crises clearly point out weaknesses in current farming conditions including ethical issues like transportation of animals," the report said.
 
LESSONS LEARNED FROM FOOT-AND-MOUTH
 
During the crisis, millions of sheep, cattle and pigs were destroyed. According to its first required annual foot-and-mouth report, the U.K.'s agriculture ministry, Defra, said last July the national laboratories became overburdened, which reduced the speed and accuracy of tests. These tests were worse in sheep where the tests are already less accurate than for cattle and pigs.
 
But in the years since the outbreak, there has been significant development in pen-side tests that need no special laboratory equipment and produce results in 15 minutes. The report said, however, that major scientific breakthroughs in immunization like live vaccines and the ability to recognize the infection in already vaccinated animals were still five to ten years away.
 
The European Union, as a result of the crisis, requires a "vaccinate-to- live" policy whereby animals are vaccinated in an attempt to save them and reduce emergency slaughter numbers. The E.U.'s vaccine bank has between 500,000 and 5 million vaccines of each of the 13 strains of FMD in case of another outbreak. The U.K.'s bank holds 500,000 doses of antigen for each of seven strains of FMD and several million leftover from the 2001 outbreak.
 
Defra presented its revised version of the Foot and Mouth Disease Contingency Plan to parliament March 31 that dictates how the agency responds to occurrences of FMD. The plan is revised annually in accordance with the Animal Health Act of 2002 and now incorporates guidelines required by the E.U. directive including the release of data during an outbreak.