Row over swine fever compensation
Swine fever in East Anglia, the latest in a series of crises hitting the pig industry, began as an animal disease problem posing no threat to public health but is turning into a dispute over legal liability with cost implications throughout the food industry.
In line with MAFF's traditional policy on major outbreaks of livestock disease, pig farmers have been offered partial compensation from public funds. As usual, a two-tier system of payments means more money for pigs compulsorily slaughtered but found not to be infected than for confirmed casualties.
At first this provoked the familiar claims of inadequate compensation, but a scheme backed by MLC and the National Pig Association to increase the payouts has now triggered a wave of much more strident protests from farmers.
Their crucial objection is apparently to the principle of imposing a levy on all slaughtered pigs to raise funds for the top-up compensation payments.
Initial reaction from militant producers' leaders was to interpret this as a secretive move, probably inspired by the Treasury, intended to limit budgetary commitments to agricultural industry support generally and specifically to set a precedent ensuring farmers would shoulder some of the financial burden of livestock disease prevention and control.
There is known to be concern within the Treasury and other departments over the continuing cost to the public purse of the BSE disaster, at least £4bn so far, and the potential expense of dealing with other livestock diseases, notably TB in cattle.
However, as The Grocer went to press there were suggestions the real objective was to push back inside the farmgate the same strict legal liability for product safety as applies along the rest of the food chain, in line with evolving EU law.
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