Fears farming could be plunged into new crisis (From Gazette & Herald)

Fears farming could be plunged into new crisis

THE spectre of foot and mouth is slowly lifting across North Yorkshire - but experts fear bird flu could plunge the region into a fresh farming crisis.

Exactly five years since the disastrous outbreak brought the region's farming and tourism industries to their knees, there is at last some hope for the future.

But even as the impact of the outbreak recedes, there are concerns that bird flu could wreak even more devastation than foot and mouth.

One way that farmers have been getting back on their feet is though "food tourism".

Rebecca Roberts runs Feast, a North Yorkshire-based organisation linking local farmers and growers with chefs and consumers.

Mrs Roberts opened a wool shop on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales the same week that foot and mouth struck the area, and her business soon went under.

She said: "North Yorkshire has farmers galore, and I don't like to see them diversifying away from farming.

"We try to help them diversify into farming, by offering their high-quality produce directly to local chefs and consumers."

Mrs Roberts said "food tourism" was a way of supporting farmers and tempting tourists back to the region, many of whom deserted it during the foot and mouth crisis.

To change that, tourism chiefs have launched a guidebook designed to entice Dutch and Belgian travellers back to the region.

The book, Mijn Reisgids Noor-Engeland (My Travel Tips to Northern England), was being unveiled in Ripley, near Harrogate.

It is hoped the guide will secure the lucrative Dutch and Belgian tourist market, which was worth more than £28 million in 2004.

In February 2002, farmer Adrian Johnson, from Yearsley, near Easingwold, was the first in the North of England to be allowed to sell a bull outside the country in the wake of foot and mouth.

Mr Johnson was granted permission by officials to sell prize 18-month-old Pyramus in Scotland.

Now, as revealed in the Gazette & Herald last week, Mr Johnson, 50, will also be one of the first farmers to export live heifers from the UK when the 10-year-old European export ban is lifted this summer.

That ban was imposed on British meat following the BSE crisis. He said the sale was another good sign for Yorkshire farming. "Hopefully it will lift people's spirits and encourage other people to look for other markets."

But that good news is tempered by fears about a bird flu outbreak.

Expert ornithologist Graham Banwell, from Old Malton, said bird migratory patterns meant there was no immediate danger to Britain, but farmers simply had to "wait and see".

But Mr Banwell, head of applied ornithology at Bishop Burton College in Beverley, said if bird flu did strike, the cost to farming would be "tremendous".

He said: "It would be another foot and mouth - in fact, it would be worse. At least food and mouth could be contained.

"If bird flu turns up on a farm, the area of potential spread is much larger through wild birds.

"Unfortunately at the moment there is very little farmers can do. Many have been putting their ducks, geese and chicken under large areas of netting, but other than that we just have to cross our fingers and wait."

Mr Banwell warned anyone who finds a number of dead birds not to touch them, but instead report it to Defra immediately, on 08459 335577.

Updated: 15:44 Wednesday, February 22, 2006