Farmers face new misery with spread of pig disease

Experts claim that more than 70 per cent of pig farms could be affected by the disease, called postweaning multisystematic wasting syndrome (PMWS), which affects piglets aged six to 14 weeks.

The disease, which poses no threat to human health, causes piglets to stop feeding and waste away. It also increases piglet mortality more than threefold.

While pig farmers in North Yorkshire fear the spread of the foot-and-mouth outbreak in the region, they also now face a greater threat from PMWS, which is spreading north and has reached the York area.

The cause of the virus is unknown, but it is spreading more easily because of the restrictions and cramped conditions to which animals are subjected because of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

John Rowbottom, a pig farmer at Pocklington, near York, whose animals are infected, said he is losing more than 20 per cent of his weaned pigs to the disease.

He said that there was no doubt that PMWS is more serious for pig farmers than foot-and-mouth, particularly since it is so new, and very little is known about it.

He said: "This is threatening the very existence of pig farmers. It's going to put a lot of us out of business, and there is no cure.

"One of the things we are advised to do is not to overcrowd pigs and reduce the numbers on site, but the lock-up situation with foot-and-mouth is exactly the opposite of that, with more pigs having to be kept in over-crowded conditions."

Stewart Huston, chairman of the National Pig Association, who farms at Masham, in North Yorkshire, said that PMWS was first seen in pigs in Canada in 1991 before being discovered in England three years ago.

He said: "We have gone through the worst prices most producers can remember, BSE, swine fever, then foot-and- mouth, and now we are in trouble again.

"Personally, I'm more frightened by the threat of PMWS than foot and mouth. This is a much bigger threat."