SOME PRESSURES TO BE EASED FOLLOWING NFU
CALLS
Farmers hit by foot and mouth should soon find
that compensation payments have been speeded up and that more movements of
animals to slaughter can take place following calls to Government from the NFU.
A dedicated slaughter compensation unit has been set up by MAFF to tackle the
current backlog in payments following repeated complaints from the NFU about
delays.
As part of this, a helpline service is being set up to deal with requests for
information from producers about their compensation claims.
The NFU has also called for licenses to be issued promptly allowing farmers
within 3km of a confirmed case to move healthy animals for slaughter into the
food chain.
This change was announced last week by Agriculture Minister Nick Brown after
vigorous NFU requests and the need for this to be implemented quickly has been
pressed home continually since then.
NFU President Ben Gill said the two improvements should help take some more of
the pressure off the livestock industry.
He said: "We have been inundated with complaints from members saying their
payments have been delayed, sometimes for several weeks.
"Given the dire financial situation of farmers, this is unacceptable and
it is good news that positive steps are being taken to rectify this.
"We are also extremely pleased that MAFF has listened to us on allowing
movement to slaughter from farms with Form D notices. This will help ease the
desperate situation for those farms trapped within 3km of a confirmed case.
"We will keep chipping away to get these improvements until the situation
starts to return to normality. But there is still a long way to go yet."
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