Seven months after foot and mouth struck his farm, Trevor Bosomworth is still counting the cost, as Mike Laycock reports

THERE'S an eerie silence down on Trevor Bosom-worth's farm near Thirsk. Before last July, there was the constant noise of squealing and lowing at Marderby Hall, Felixkirk. "We had about 8,000 pigs and 560 cattle."

Then the foot and mouth disaster struck, and the whole lot was slaughtered in line with the Government's controversial campaign to eradicate the disease.

Trevor says foot and mouth was found to have infected some of the cattle at one part of the farm on one side of Thirsk. The pigs were located some seven miles away on the other side of Thirsk, and he thought at first they would avoid slaughter. "I carried on feeding them."

But officials from DEFRA decided there might have been some dangerous contact between the two sets of animals, which could have resulted in the pigs becoming infected, and it was decided the pigs should be slaughtered as a precautionary measure. It turned out later that they did not have the disease.

It was an horrendous time Trevor will never forget. But anyone imagining he could quickly pick up his compensation from the Government, re-stock and carry on as if nothing had happened would be sorely mistaken.

Seven months after the outbreak, there are still no pigs or cattle on the farm. "It's very strange," he said.

And even after he manages to re-stock with pigs in a few weeks time, it will not be until next January that they start to bring in any income.

The main reason for the long delay has been the time taken to completely clean and disinfect the farm.

Trevor says the outbreak coincided with a Government decision to halt cleansing payments because of concerns about the costs to the taxpayer.

The clean-up operation, involving the spraying of high-pressure jets of water and disinfectant on buildings and trackways, could only begin last October. Trevor deployed his workers to the massive task which, in the poor winter weather, took months to complete.

His staff were also kept busy on the arable side of the farm and he managed to avoid laying any of them off.

He says that while he has been fully compensated for the loss of the animals, there has been nothing to help him cope with the lost turnover, which he estimates at £30,000-plus per week and which will continue until he can start selling pigs again next January.

Updated: 11:46 Wednesday, February 20, 2002