Egg producers will face paying a levy to help meet the cost of poultry disease control under a new scheme being proposed by Defra.
Free range and organic farmers could even end up paying higher costs than other sectors because their outdoor flocks may be seen as higher risk than birds kept indoors.
Meetings have already taken place between the British Egg Industry Council and government officials to discuss the new Cost Sharing Partnership which will also affect all other sectors of agriculture.
Defra has been taking guidance from an Australian official who was responsible for bringing in a similar project in his own country. That scheme places animal diseases into categories depending on their impact on animal and human health. Where a condition has a higher effect on human health, the government pays proportionately more. Where the disease is confined to animals the farmer meets a bigger part of the bill. Producers have a legal liability to pay the levy which is collected at hatchery level on the basis of numbers of day-old chicks and only kicks-in once a disease outbreak is identified and controlled.
Defra is anxious that the farming industry should “own” its own scheme and decide how it should be set up and how charges should be paid.
Mark Williams, chief executive of the BEIC, said: “We have made it clear that if the industry is to pay any levy it must have real influence on policy decisions, including the drafting of legislation and establishment of disease control measures.”
Cost sharing proposals are also being discussed in Brussels and the UK egg industry has also made it clear that it would not be prepared to accept any home-grown scheme ahead of new EU rules because of the danger of distortion of competition.
The new moves come on top of Defra decisions that individual producers hit by a major disease outbreak must be responsible for meeting many of the costs of dealing with it on their holding.
As already reported in the Ranger the avian influenza contingency plans spell out only minimum compensation for culled flocks and that the government will meet the costs of only preliminary clean-ups. Farmers will have to meet the impact of prolonged loss of income, all further bills for cleaning and disinfection, destruction or transport of manure and pasture treatments.