STEPHEN LEWIS speaks to the man who has become the face of farming during the long and harrowing fight against foot and mouth.

BEN Gill sounds tired. It is hardly surprising. For the last two months, as the grim toll exacted by foot and mouth has risen he, more than anyone, has been the person fighting the farmers' corner. He has become the face of farming, his familiar, slightly crumpled and weary features staring out from TV screens as he tries to force the Government and nation to listen to what farmers have to say.

I was to have met him at National Farmers Union headquarters in London at 1pm for an interview. But just before I set off from York his office rang to say he couldn't make it because he had to go to the House of Commons. Could we re-arrange?

The interview was rescheduled for 4.45pm, over the telephone. But at 5pm he was still in a meeting, running late.

"You wouldn't believe the day he's had," says his secretary apologetically.

Eventually, just after 5pm, he calls me. "I'm speaking to a science conference at the British Academy this evening and I still haven't written my paper," he says. "I'll have to make it up in the car!"

Actually, he says, the day has been pretty much par for the course. Breakfast-time radio and TV interviews, followed by internal meetings, then over to the Commons for a statement by Nick Brown, more media interviews at Labour's Millbank HQ, then quickly back to NFU headquarters in London's Shaftesbury Avenue.

Since the foot and mouth crisis began two months ago, the National Farmers Union president has managed just five days at home - the family farm at Hawkhills near Easingwold, where he rears 360 ewes and grows root crops such as sugar beet and carrots.

Two of his four sons have left home, a third is at university and the youngest is still at school, so he has been relying on the goodwill of a neighbour to look after the farm. The long hours and enforced absence from home are taking their toll, he admits.

"It has been demanding, and it's very stressful," he says. "I find myself becoming irritable very easily." I can almost hear him shrug down the telephone line. "But it's part of the job."

His time in the limelight isn't about to end soon. There is no doubt that the outbreak is past its peak, he admits - but it will be some time before farmers and the nation can relax. He doesn't believe optimistic forecasts that foot and mouth will have been eradicated by August.

"We're on the downhill slope, and things are getting better now. But there will be sporadic outbreaks for several months yet, and there will be restrictions on sheep for a very long time - certainly for the rest of this year."

That doesn't necessarily mean all sheep movements will be banned to the end of 2001, he says - merely that any that take place will have to be licensed.

It doesn't necessarily mean, either, that the countryside will remain completely closed to walkers for months to come.

Access to the countryside will need to be assessed a step at a time, he says, depending on the extent to which there is the risk of contact with livestock that may have been infected.

That may mean some coastal paths where there are no livestock being opened up reasonably early. But the outlook is not good for walkers hoping to take to the North York Moors or Yorkshire Dales during the summer.

Before it can safely be said foot and mouth is beaten, Mr Gill insists, the UK will have to go three months without any fresh cases.

And to be absolutely certain, blood tests would have to be carried out on the national herd and flock to make sure it is disease-free.

But he is absolutely sure about one thing: vaccination is not the way to get on top of the disease - more than ever now, with hopefully the worst of the outbreak behind us. The country's top epidemiologists and animal health experts are all agreed on that, he insists.

"Vaccination is not an option for stopping foot and mouth," he says bluntly. "It has never been regarded as a way to stop foot and mouth. It is just a tool to help if you're not winning the battle, if you're losing control. We are past the peak. You cannot start vaccinating, and then in a month's time say 'this is not a good idea, can we undo it?'"

It is the kind of blunt speaking that has characterised his dogged campaign to keep farmers' interests in the forefront during the long fight against foot and mouth. He is dismissive of a lot of the hype and hysteria surrounding the way the outbreak has been reported - and especially warnings about the possible threat to human health.

Fears about poisonous dioxins in the smoke from funeral pyres are just 'red herrings', he says - dioxins are found in all smoke and there is no evidence that levels are any worse in smoke from the pyres. The only health hazard from the pyres is the smoke itself, he says, which could conceivably cause problems for asthmatics.

He is equally dismissive about hysteria over cases of human foot and mouth. "They are very, very rare, they are very, very mild and there are no lasting effects," he says. "It's similar to a bad cold."

I am about to point out that that sounds pretty much like what was being said about the disease in animals in the early stages, but before I can do so he cuts me off. "It's not the same as in animals, where the mortality is pretty dreadful," he says quickly.

He hasn't got much time, either, for all the sentimentality surrounding Phoenix the calf, spared from slaughter after a national outcry. The public reaction to Phoenix displays a misunderstanding of the situation in the countryside more than anything, he says.

"It's tugging at the emotional heartstrings. It diverts from the general problem that killing animals isn't nice and nobody likes doing it." Point made.

Despite his bluntness, he won't be drawn into criticism of the way MAFF and the Government have handled the crisis. He says that with hindsight things could obviously have been handled differently.

But nobody had been prepared for the sheer size of the logistical problem that the country would face so quickly - a larger-scale logistical problem than the one faced during the Gulf War according to one Army brigadier, he says.

Nevertheless, the Government did act quickly and firmly to stop all livestock movements very early on, on the first Friday of the outbreak.

That, he says, was a bold move. "If we had waited until the following Monday or Tuesday, it could have been much, much worse."

That hardly bears thinking about.

Updated: 10:30 Friday, April 27, 2001