Vicar warns of disease's scars

Farmers were unable to sell livestock

A Devon clergyman has warned that the emotional scars of the foot-and-mouth crisis could last for decades.

The anguish may never subside in those who lose farms that have been in their families for generations, said the Reverend Paul Fitzpatrick.

Mr Fitzpatrick made his comments on BBC Radio 4's Farming Today programme on Thursday, after giving evidence at the Devon public inquiry in the epidemic.

He was a member of a five-strong team of clergy who worked with farmers and their families across 90 square miles of Devon during the height of the crisis.

When all the families are crushed together, all living together, you had all that build-up of emotion

The Reverend Paul Fitzpatrick

He said nothing he had experienced during 20 years in the Royal Navy had prepared him for the trauma he encountered in Devon.

He told of harrowing poverty among families who, unable to sell livestock, had barely any income for months.

"You see children coming to school, and to put shoes on their feet is a real struggle, and a torn shoe is a major crisis.

"That's basic living, that's hand-to-mouth."

He spoke as a new report showed some farmers were earning as little as 71p an hour.

He told Farming Today presenter Miriam O'Reilly how his phone began ringing incessantly as news of a potential epidemic emerged.

Farmers became trapped on their own land

"It never stopped," he said. "People remember the last one, they knew what was coming and they were very, very scared of it.

"Then we started to have cases. Then fear became desperation and desperation became depression - a blackness and a real anger."

As farmers became trapped on their own land, cut off from friends, households became emotional tinderboxes.

"When all the families are crushed together, all living together, you had all that build-up of emotion," he said.

Farms failing

One of the biggest fears, he said, was that farms would fail after being in the same families for generations - as far back as Domesday, even.

"Farms have gone through bubonic plague, they have gone through war, they gone through depression. They have gone through hell and they survive.

"No farmer wants to say, 'Actually, it's over. I finished that line'."

The hurt, he warned, could be bottled up for years - with emotions liable to explode far into the future.