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The Scheme

The EU export restrictions imposed in response to foot and mouth disease within Great Britain is causing welfare problems for farmers in Wales. The Light Lambs Welfare Disposal Scheme (LLWDS) is designed to address some of these animal welfare problems as they relate to lambs

It will be a voluntary scheme where farmers will be given the opportunity, for a fixed period of 10 weeks, to dispose of light lambs for a fixed amount (£15), a price that has been set to avoid over-compensation and which may be adjusted downwards in response to market movements over the duration of the scheme.

Farmers will be required to transport the lambs to participating collection centres where they will be purchased. The collection centres will be responsible for transporting the lambs onto participating abattoirs, which will then arrange for slaughter and disposal. The Welsh Assembly Government will reimburse the operators for the services they provide.

All payments connected to the operation of collection centres, slaughter, rendering, incinerating, disposal, associated veterinary costs and transport will be paid directly by Welsh Assembly Government to the providers of the relevant service.
In order to claim under the scheme businesses must be classified as a "small or medium sized enterprise" which means that the beneficiaries of this scheme (as opposed to service providers) must have less than 250 employees, less than €50 million annual turnover. Larger businesses and publicly funded government agencies are not eligible to be beneficiaries of this scheme.

Outline of scheme

The scheme will be voluntary and aimed at light lambs (i.e. those under 25 kg liveweight) and will be open to farmers in Wales facing animal welfare problems as a result of the EU export restrictions that have been operating the outbreak of foot and mouth diseases in England.

In Wales, some 830,000 lambs annually are primarily produced for export within the EU. With this level, some 300,000 lighter lambs (between8-12 kgs deadweight) are produced for markets in France, Spain, Italy and Greece). The export market runs from August to February. It is estimated that in Wales there are likely to be around 250,000 lambs eligible for the disposal scheme. Producers will be required to transport their lambs to participating collection centres at their own expense.

The collection centres will pay £15 per head for eligible animals - the money to be paid to the producer within 21 days of receipt of the animals in to the scheme. The Welsh Assembly Government reserves the right to revise the payment made to a farmer for an animal entered under the scheme in the light of market circumstances.

The lambs must be pre-booked into the scheme by producers contacting collection centres. The collection centres will be responsible for arranging transportation of the animals to abattoirs where they will be slaughtered. The carcasses will then be transported from the abattoir for rendering or incineration.

Meat from animals entering the scheme will not be available for human consumption.

The scheme will operate for a maximum period of 10 weeks from 27 October 2007 in order to tackle quickly the welfare problems that exist. The scheme will close on 4 January 2008 and final payments will be made by 31 March 2008.

Collection centres will have the facility to weigh lambs with a view to rejecting them from the scheme if they are over 25Kg in weight. Rejected lambs will not be returned from the collection centres and will be slaughtered with no compensation payable to the farmer. In addition, no payment will be made on animals that die in transit.

Farmers must ensure that movement documents are completed as necessary in order to notify the Local Authorities of the movements for identification and traceability reasons (AMLI). Abattoirs will be able to operate under the control of an Official Veterinary Surgeon. Where abattoirs are processing lambs for rendering rather than incineration, the skins will be removed.

There will be an Official Veterinary Surgeon presence at the abattoirs. Movement documents will be processed through the usual channels. These documents will be cross-checked against numbers entering the scheme through the abattoirs. The Welsh Assembly Government's Inspectors and/or Trading Standards will provide additional audit cover by checking the number of sheep in the consignments delivered from producers.

Abattoirs and collection centres will be located in Wales.

The intention is that lambs will be accepted at collection centres on a first come, first served basis (through the booking system) unless there are particularly serious welfare issues that require priority.

The Welsh Assembly Government is undertaking a tender exercise to identify collection centres/abattoirs that are prepared to participate in the disposal scheme, including the transport and incineration/rendering elements.

Further guidance

Guidance notes (rtf 66 kb)

Guidance notes (pdf 25 Kb)

List of collection centres (excel 16.0 Kb)

Tender Documents

Invitation to tender (rtf 144 Kb)

Specification of tender (rtf 101 Kb)

Schedule of prices (rtf 20.0 Kb)

Claim form (pdf 117 Kb)

Conditions of contract (pdf 128 Kb)

Contact us : rah.requests@wales.gsi.gov.uk

So basicaly - perfectly good animals are to be destroyed in a knee jerk reaction and good meat is to be burnt. You may think we are mad but - THERE IS ANOTHER WAY.

A "Food distribution Cymru scheme" If we the tax payers are paying £15 per lamb to be burnt and disposed then why not just give these animals to a local butcher to slaughter so that they can compete against the supermarket, or have a national list where you can go and claim your "discounted" portion of meat from your local butcher or farmers market. In one small North Wales town there are already 30,000 animals booked for burning - so how many nationwide? do we still sound mad?