SOARING feed prices are threatening the future of the region's livestock industry, according to farmers' leaders.

A national report yesterday said consumers must pay more for their meat, which retailers must then pass back to producers.

Richard Crane, food and agriculture partner at Deloitte, the leading business advisory group, said the UK's livestock industry was almost at breaking point.

The effect of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in Surrey, coupled with a doubling of animal feed costs due to bad weather and poor harvests around the world, had hit UK producers hard.

He said: "Many producers are facing near 100 per cent price rises in feed costs. Production is unlikely to be viable without price rises."

The report was welcomed by David Maughan, member of the North-East livestock board of the National Farmers' Union (NFU), who farms near Darlington.

He said: "Cereal prices are a huge, huge challenge for the livestock industry.

"The answer is for the retail sector to realise what is happening and be more amenable to price increases going through to farmers.

"If they don't, there won't be a British livestock industry in two or three years time.

"The whole livestock industry, whether with feathers, trotters or cattle, is saying the same thing."

Barley, which last year cost £67 a tonne today, costs £131. One farmer said his feed costs had soared to £1,000 a month while the price for his cattle had not risen.

Stewart Houston, chairman of the British Pig Executive (BPEX), said producers were losing an average of £22 per finished pig because of the doubling in feed prices.

Mr Houston, who has a pig unit in Bedale, North Yorkshire, said: "These rises are threatening the very future of the industry.

"Feed wheat prices have doubled in the last year and this has added more than 30p per kg to the cost of production."

Mr Houston said: "Something has to be done within days not weeks, the situation is really that serious."

BPEX has launched a £500,000 campaign to highlight the threat and is meeting MPs and major retailers to press home its message.

The BPEX board meets on September 11 and will consider suspending the £1.05 levy per pig each producer pays