Cash cows: how farmers have been compensated
Page 39
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
The Government estimates that the BSE crisis will end up costing UK and EU taxpayers £4.6bn from the time the first safeguards were put in place in the late 1980s to 2001, when the Ministry of Agriculture predicts the disease will finally have been eradicated.
Although £60m of this has paid for research into BSE and its related human form, OD, most of it has gone in direct compensation to farmers for schemes such as the compulsory culling of cattle over 30 months old. Some 250-million animals have been slaughtered under this scheme.
Since 1996, when restrictions on beef were tightened even further, firms in associated industries, such as renderers, abattoirs and processors, have also been eligible for compensation.
But hauliers have been unable to claim a penny for their losses.