Farmers cash in on foot-and-mouth

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The spiralling cost of Britain's foot-and-mouth crisis is set to continue after it was revealed that farmers are making £1 million claims for culling their animals.

The government told CNN on Sunday that at least 37 farmers had lodged compensation claims of more than £1 million ($1.4 million).

The Sunday Times reported that all had received cheques, with one farmer being paid £4.2 million ($6 million) from the cull of his pedigree herds of cattle and sheep.

Two government watchdog agencies -- the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee -- are investigating the payment claims, the Press Association reported Sunday. Both agencies are already looking into government ministers' handling of the disease.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) declined to comment on the amount of compensations paid out to farmers so far, but said the level of claims agreed depended on the pedigree of the animals.

The news of the compensation claims is likely to fuel concerns about the behaviour of farmers during the five-month-long outbreak following recent media reports that the highly infectious disease may have been spread deliberately.

The virus, which is not passed to humans, affects cloven-hooved animals such as sheep, cattle, pigs and goats.

Britain has sought to fight the outbreak through culling -- killing the whole herd when animals developed the disease and later slaughtering healthy animals for three kilometres around infected sites. The carcasses are then buried or burned.

The lastest revelation comes a day after the release of a study that predicted the cost of fighting the disease and compensating farmers would reach £5 billion by the end of the year. Other industries, such as tourism, have also been hard-hit.

The report's author, Professor Midmore, an economist at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth, said vaccinating animals against the disease instead of culling them would have saved the taxpayer at least £3 billion. That figure was disputed by the government.

Midmore told The Observer newspaper on Sunday that farmers were being over-compensated. "They are getting more than market value -- for example, they are getting £75 for a breeding ewe whose value at slaughter is £5. Even when you take into account the value of lambs they could have, that is high, and sometimes farmers negotiate up to £300 for them."

Rumours but no evidence of deliberate infection of sheep and cattle

One unnamed farmer told the newspaper: "They should stop all compensation immediately, and then they'd stop foot-and-mouth. As long as there's money to be made, the disease will spread."

National Farmers Union deputy director general Ian Gardiner denied that farmers compensated by the government were "foot-and-mouth millionaires."

He told the Press Association: "They have received compensation for the loss of their animals and in the vast majority of cases that compensation will be spent on more animals, as soon as they can restock their farms." Gardiner said farmers would not blow the money on other things, adding: "I think you will find that people with pedigree herds who have put their livelihood and often their father's before them into it will want to resume their business."

A farmer in Pembrokeshire, west Wales, notified authorities in July saying she had received a telephone call from someone demanding £2,000 cash in exchange for infecting her animals with the disease.

Nuala Preston, of Trefoel Stud Farm in Newport, said several farmers in the area had received similar offers. Local officials are investigating the allegations.

CNN European Political Editor Robin Oakley said at the time: "If people are deliberately infecting their animals, and there is no proof that is the case, it could explain the emergence of new cases in previously clean areas and the continuing presence of the disease."

New cases of foot-and-mouth continue to be reported every day across the UK -- taking the total of infected cases to 1,928 by Sunday -- despite more than three-and-a-half million sheep, cattle, pigs and goats being culled and billions of pounds being spent.

More than 6,500 sheep have been culled in the Brecon Beacons, in Wales, during the last week and tests are currently being carried out on a further 4,000 sheep.