Disease zone hits market

Oswestry's livestock market is suffering a downturn in trade and farmers are facing logistical nightmares because of the national blue tongue restrictions.Farmers from the rest of Shropshire can no longer bring animals to the market to sell because they are the wrong side of the blue tongue exclusion zone. Cattle and sheep numbers have already dropped.

Organisers at the town's Smithfield warn there is worse to come as the new agricultural season gets under way.

One north Shropshire farmer said today he was faced with finding an alternative market to sell thousands of sheep.

The problems revolve around the restricted and non-restricted zones for blue tongue disease which arrived in Britain from the continent last year.

Much of Shropshire is in a restricted zone but Oswestry and most of Wales is still blue tongue free.

It means that English farmers outside the Oswestry borough council area cannot sell cattle and sheep at the Wednesday market.

Market manager, Wyn Morton, said: "There has been a drop in trade already but we are expected a more dramatic drop in the coming weeks. The traditional farming patterns mean we get a lot of stock from the Welsh side of the border in the winter but in the spring we have a lot of trade from the lowlands of Shropshire.

"This is another hard knock for this area. We had recovered magnificently from foot and mouth and in fact throughput was higher than it had been pre-foot and mouth."

He said as well as the crisis for the market itself, farmers were also struggling to cope.

Giles Ratcliffe, from Whixhall near Wem, would normally expect to sell 3,000 sheep through the Oswestry market in the coming weeks. But he is now faced with finding a new market.

"We are part of a larger supply chain and the restrictions are making life complicated for everyone," he said.

"There are also welfare issues to consider. I could take the animals to market at Bishop's Castle but that is a further hour's drive away.

"I understand the need to control the disease. However, this is not something that farmers needed after foot and mouth."