NEW laws lifting anonymity for sperm and egg donors are likely to lead to long waiting lists for couples seeking fertility treatment and a boom in “fertility tourism”, experts said yesterday.

The British Fertility Society said that sperm stocks had become significantly depleted even before the introduction next month of a law that will give children born from donated sperm and egg the right to trace their biological parents when they turn 18.

Allan Pacey, the secretary of the society, estimated that there had been a 30-fold decrease in sperm donors in the past ten years, with most of the decline occurring after 1996, when the issue of anonymity was first raised.

“In 1992 we recruited 30 donors at our centre in Sheffield. In 2002 we recruited one. Now we have stopped recruiting altogether because the high costs of screening donors and storing the sperm do not make it viable with so few donors,” Dr Pacey said.

He added that about 80 per cent of NHS clinics offering fertility treatments were finding it difficult to obtain sperm and that many were importing it from Denmark.

Alison Murdoch, a consultant gynaecologist and chairwoman of the British Fertility Society, said that she feared that couples would increasingly have to seek fertility treatment abroad or use unlicensed sperm suppliers that operate through the internet.

Professor Murdoch, who runs the Newcastle Fertility Centre at Life, said that in addition to facing long waits, couples would also have reduced choice over the types of sperm and egg donors they used.

At present couples have a degree of choice over the physical characteristics of the donor, to help them to find a close match to their own appearance. This helps the resulting child to fit in better with the family.

“There is no waiting list in Newcastle and couples can choose sperm from 17 donors. In the next year or so, they will have a choice between only one or two donors. If the husband is big and bald and the only donor is short and a redhead, that might not be acceptable to them,” she said.

Although the new laws lifting anonymity of donors apply only to sperm and egg donated after April 2005, Professor Murdoch said that mere talk of the legislation had deterred donors. Many mistakenly believed that they might be obliged to support any child born from their sperm or egg financially or that the law would be made retrospective.

Professor Murdoch also said that couples might be increasingly tempted to use “underground” internet sperm donor services or to travel abroad for treatment, but these services may not conduct a proper screening of donors. Because they do not freeze the sperm they use, internet sperm suppliers, such as mannotincluded.com, do not require a licence and will not be covered by the new rules on donor anonymity.

Professor Murdoch said that many couples were already seeking fertility treatment in Brussels, where donors can remain anonymous. “We need to be very careful about people travelling to countries where they don’t have the same standards that we have in the UK. There are some Third World countries that do not have the same regulatory procedures that we have,” she said.

John Gonzalez, who runs mannotincluded.com, insisted that all of his donors were medically screened and described the law on lifting anonymity as ludicrous.

He added that many of his 3,200 registered sperm donors had come because they did not want to be identified.

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