Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what assessment his Department has made of the economic effect of the Schmallenberg virus on (a) farmers and (b) regional economies.
[139201]
Answer
The information is not held in the format requested. Economic assessments were carried out on an epidemiological assessment completed in early 2012, looking at the potential spread of Schmallenberg virus (SBV) in GB, the impact and risk across different regions of the country. As the true impact was not known at that time, we used estimates based on other similar viruses and the UK livestock distribution.
This demonstrated that for infection in counties south of the midlands, which were determined to be at high or medium risk of SBV spread in 2011-12, if losses occurred on 5% of cattle and sheep farms and in 10% of the herd or flock, the cost to sheep farmers would be approximately £1 million, and for cattle farmers approximately £2.5 million. This is less than the economic impact of other common industry managed livestock disease such as mastitis in dairy cows, and foot rot in sheep. Widening the assessment to include counties deemed to be at low risk of infection in 2011, increased costs to farmers by about a third.
Another scenario tested was 20% of all cattle and sheep farms in the high and medium risk areas being affected. This increased costs to sheep farmers to approximately £4 million, and to cattle farmers to approximately £10 million.
Since carrying out these assessments, we now have information from the EU and our own UK farms on the impact and spread. These confirm actual impact to overall be lower than our estimates (although of course
the impact on an individual flock or herd may be substantial), and we are now looking at reviewing the economic impact to take these into account.