THE region's hill farmers yesterday spoke of the plight they are in, with no income, extra stock to feed and dwindling forage supplies.

Many warned that unless livestock markets quickly returned to normal, there could be animal welfare issues.

Peter Kendall, president of the National Farmers' Union, met them at Hawes Auction Mart, in North Yorkshire, only hours after a fifth outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed in Surrey.

The mart's two-day sale of breeding lambs - which normally results in £2m exchanging hands and represents the biggest payday for about 500 local farmers - was cancelled this week due to foot-and-mouth restrictions.

Will Sedgley, 27, from Garston, should have sold 250 gimmer lambs at Monday's sale. Last year, he received an average of £65 a head.

He said: "They normally go for breeding to farmers down South, but they are still on the farm and we do not know what is happening.

"We plan the whole year knowing that they will be sold at that sale. Everything is planned round that -the feeding, grass management; everything."

The income from the sale is not profit, but goes on bills and running costs.

A further 150 lambs are due to be sold on October 1, but there is no way of knowing whether restrictions will have been eased by then.

Mr Sedgley said: "It has a knock-on effect for the whole year, not just now. People think we can stop, leave it a month and start again, but it does not work like that."

The lambs that should have been sold would have freed up fields where ewes would have been tupped.

He believes the Government has contained the disease correctly, but did not realise the impact that cancelling the all- important breeding and store sales would have on the hills.

Mr Sedgley said: "The tup sales are due in a couple of weeks and we usually sell them on the quality of their lambs, but if no one has seen them at the sales, they do not know the quality."

John Hore, a farmer from Gloucester, bought 650 breeding lambs from Hawes Mart and Kendal Mart, in Cumbria, last year.

He keeps them for a year and then sells them at Cirencester and Salisbury to buyers who put them to rams in the next two to three weeks.

But the ban on sales means they are stuck on his farm and he was unable to buy another 400 at Hawes this week.

He said: "I do not think the general public realise just what a chain reaction this has throughout the country.

"It is the first time I have considered that living on an island is a drawback.

"Elsewhere, they regionalise restrictions, but here they slap a ban on the whole country."

Mr Kendall said the National Farmers' Union was working with other organisations to try to get the rest of the country moving while an agreed restricted area remained around Surrey, where all the outbreaks have taken place.

He said: "I am hoping Wales, Scotland and most of England will be free to have live markets and go for exports.

"If we can get a timetable for that, it will be a great win."

The farmers emphasised the need for urgency.

One said: "It will be disastrous if places like this cannot have these sales.

"We should have had 30,000 lambs sold this week at Hawes, but they are still on farms.