Farmers burn fleeces illegally to save cash

Mar 30 2008 by Eleanor Gregson, Sunday Sun

DESPERATE North farmers are breaking the law by burning sheep’s wool rather than selling it in order to stop themselves going bust, the Sunday Sun can reveal.

They say the cost of preparing it for sale is so much greater than the money they make from it that they have no other choice but to destroy it.

Scores of farmers hit by the crisis in places such as the Lake District in Cumbria and North Yorkshire are breaking environmental waste disposal rules by burning the wool rather than struggling to meet the cost of processing it for the market.

And this combined with rising fuel and feed bills has squeezed incomes to less than £6000 a year, with them being almost totally reliant on the sale of lambs.

A 50-year-old hill farmer who keeps a small flock of Shetland sheep near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, and who has had to resort to burning wool, said last week: “I hate doing it. It’s heartbreaking to burn it, but the price I get makes it uneconomical to transport.”

Another farmer, who keeps 1600 Herdwick sheep near Whitehaven in Cumbria, said it cost him 70p to shear one of them, which produces about a kilo of wool that sells for less than10p.

He said: “It actually costs more to get the sheep sheared and pay for the packing and haulage costs from farm to wool depot than the actual value of the wool. We are pretty much obliged to shear the things because of animal rights but it’s very much a loss-making exercise and is a labour-intensive job.

“A kilo of Herdwick wool straight from the sheep is worth less than 10p . . . 10 or 20 years ago the same would have sold for the equivalent of 50 or 60p.”

The farmer, who asked not to be named, refused to say whether he burned wool but said: “It’s illegal to burn wool but we are looking at ways of disposing of the wool . . . and that is one of the ways.

“The biggest impact we’re seeing from the falling prices of wool is that less and less people are becoming involved in the day-to-day activity of shepherding.

“It is extremely difficult . . . the wool from sheep, which 50 or 60 years ago was the primary source of income, has now become a liability.”