Slaughter threat to island lambs

Farmers need to get their livestock to markets

Crofters on Shetland fear up to 50,000 lambs will have to be destroyed because the market has been wiped out by the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Farming leaders in the islands are calling on the Scottish Executive to step in and fund a livestock welfare scheme to cover the disposal of surplus sheep.

With no exports to Europe and limited sales in the UK, lamb producers are facing the prospect of having to shoot and bury their low-value stock in the autumn.

With the Shetland and Orkney islands free of the foot-and-mouth disease, calls are growing for the export ban to be lifted to allow lamb to be shipped from Shetland direct to Europe.

No sheep have moved in or out of the Shetlands

Shetland MSP Tavish Scott says the Scottish Executive must intervene.

The Lib Dem MSP said: "The Scottish Executive needs to keep open the welfare disposal scheme which has been in place since the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.

"That could put a floor into the market that would be helpful and important measures that would give confidence to the market which could literally fall right through the floor."

A spokesman for the Scottish Executive said it was very conscious of the particular difficulties the export ban is causing island communities.

He said ministers were actively pursuing options for lifting the ban with the European Commission.

The spokesman added that they hoped to announce measures soon to address concerns over the lamb market.

Testing programme

Meanwhile, there is growing optimism that Scotland could be on the verge of defeating foot-and-mouth with no new outbreaks for nearly two months.

A blood-testing programme has been under way to try to find out if the disease is still being harboured in sheep flocks close to infected areas.

Samples taken from 23,000 sheep on 350 selected farms in Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders have proved negative.

Regions badly hit

Vets are encouraged by the results but say there is no room for complacency.

Dumfries and Galloway was the worst hit region during the outbreak, with the Borders also badly affected.

Since the first Scottish case at Lockerbie on 1 March there have been 187 confirmed cases across the two regions.

In total about 1,500 farms have lost 750,000 animals.