FMD culls delay compensation for livestock farmers

Recent culls and suspected cases of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) have caused further delays in compensation payments to livestock farmers who lost their animals to the disease, president of the ‘voice of the livestock breeders’ organisation, Neophytos Neophytou, said on Saturday. “People are worried because they have been without income for too many months,” he said. Neophytou said the organisation had held a meeting on Friday attended by more than 200 affected sheep and goat farmers to discuss the latest developments. He added that the organisation expected to receive a detailed plan from the agriculture ministry in the coming week outlining the implementation of further measures. Related Articles • Compensation for FMD affected livestock units pending • 3,000 animals to be culled after FMD cases went unrecorded • Bluetongue kills 10 animals on three farms Under the proposed procedure, a small number of sentinel animals would first be introduced into farms where livestock had been culled. These animals would then undergo testing to establish whether the premises were free of the virus. If the results confirmed this, farmers would be allowed to order replacement livestock. According to the information received by the organisation, payments for lost income would begin once 30 per cent of the replacement animals ordered had arrived at the farms. Neophytou warned that the recent culls and suspected cases were delaying this process further, potentially leaving affected farmers without income for several more months. He clarified that compensation for animals that had been culled was separate from payments intended to cover lost income. The latter, he explained, were intended to support farmers who had lost their livestock and remained without income while waiting for their farms to resume operations. He also reiterated the organisation’s opposition to culling animals solely on the basis of the detection of antibodies, arguing that culls should only be carried out when the active virus is identified. “Here, the authorities are talking only about the detection of foot-and-mouth disease antibodies. We continue to maintain, as do many vets, that this business with antibodies must stop. Animals should only be culled where the active virus is present,” he said. Neophytou claimed that recent culls had involved animals in which antibodies were detected but no active virus had been identified, strongly criticising the authorities’ approach. “It is unacceptable that, eight months on from when we culled so many animals and carried out vaccinations, we are now talking about culls. It is utterly unacceptable. We have devastated the sector, we have vaccinated the animals, and now they come and talk to us about antibodies,” he said. The agriculture ministry had earlier in October announced that an additional 2,000 animals were scheduled to be culled due to FMD, with further compensation payments paused until the latter were completed.