Hundreds of thousands of healthy lambs on Scottish hill farms are to be slaughtered and incinerated as a result of an export ban imposed by foot-and-mouth restrictions.

Up to 400,000 light lambs will be disposed of under a “welfare” initiative, first reported in The Times 11 days ago. Because of the movement restrictions the animals have been starving as grazing diminishes.

The lambs, which weigh under 25kg, were specially bred for the European market, where they are eaten whole. But because of the lack of decent grazing, they are now regarded as too small to be processed for butcher meat. The situation is so desperate that many of the lambs have been eating grass reserved to fatten ewes.

Plans to can the meat and send it to Malawi, rather than simply render it, were blocked by the EU export ban imposed after the outbreaks of foot-and-mouth in England during the summer.

A spokesman for the National Farmers Union in Scotland said: “There have been reports of lambs dying and the situation is now desperate. We’ve got the export market back but the lambs are now inedible, and even if we could sell them there would be a backlog of months because we normally sell 10,000 per week and we have hundreds of thousands.”

The slaughter and incineration plans will be announced this morning by Charles Milne, the Scottish Chief Veterinary Officer, and it is expected that some lambs will be culled before the day is over.

The funding of the culling has also provoked an intense political row between ministers at Holyrood and Westminster. Richard Lochhead, cabinet secretary for rural affairs and the environment, said that Defra had a moral duty to pay for the Scottish welfare cull as the recent outbreaks of foot-and-mouth originated from a government laboratory.

Last night Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Farming, announced a £12.5 million support package for livestock farmers in England hit by the foot-and-mouth restrictions, with separate arrangements for farmers in Scotland and Wales; however it was not clear if the payments would cover the cost of the cull in Scotland.

As Mr Benn announced the details of the support package he acknowledged that the most likely source of the outbreak was faulty drains at premises in Pirbright, Surrey, housing the government’s Institute of Animal Health and the private company Merial Animal Health. Meanwhile Mike Flynn, the Chief Superintendent of the Scottish SPCA, acknowledged that the cull is likely to be unpopular among the public, but he said it was necessary to protect the lambs from an unpleasant death.

“It is a dreadful situation but we would rather seem them in a properly managed scheme than having them starving to death,” he said.

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