ON any other market day the cattle stalls are full, buyers are vying for the best animals and you would have to shout to get yourself heard over the clamour of man and beast.

But Gisburn Auction Mart yesterday was like a ghost town. As the mad cow disease scare worsens, the ripples that it started are reaching tidal wave proportions.

The first to be hit were the farmers, but now the repercussions are being felt by other sections of the community - from the cafe staff and office workers at Gisburn Auction Mart to the haulage contractors who transport the newly-bought beef stock for buyers and the abattoir workers who process the meat.

And farmers believe it will ultimately be the public who pays the price of what they say is a "scandal" which will break the British farmer and rock the country.

Doug Lambert, who farms in Wigglesworth and is also a director of the auction mart, said: "This of the first week in about 20 years that I have not brought an animal to sell. I brought 16 last week, lost hundreds of pounds and had to take four back home. The tragedy of it all is that there is nothing wrong with the beef stock. "I rear about 400 cattle for beef and this BSE scare could see farmers all over the country going under.

"And it's not just the farmers who suffer. We have had to cut back on about eight auction mart staff today because there is simply no work for them to do.

"I don't know where it is all going to end."

By 10.45am about 80 head of cattle would normally have gone under the hammer in the beef ring. Yesterday there weren't even any buyers.

Finally a few did turn up and the sale was able to begin.

Peter Pearson and Roland Agar travelled from Bradford and Ilkley to buy stock for their wholesale butchery businesses. But the beef they bought will not go for slaughter. Mr Agar said: "I will be feeding the stock on because I simply cannot sell it at the moment.

"The only place where meat is selling is in the rural communities, in village shops and the like, where farming and countryside communities recognise that mad cow disease is just scaremongering.

"It appears to be the industrial areas and the big towns and cities where the public are reacting and the majority are acting through ignorance of the true facts of BSE."

But ignorance or not, the public's wariness of beef and is hitting the farmers hard financially.

A good beef bullock last week would have brought about £665. Yesterday the same animal was sold for just £432.

That is a loss to the farmer of about 30 per cent on an animal. And it is a loss which cannot be sustained by most farmers.

James Townsend, of Barnside Farm, Laneshaw Bridge, Colne, fears that he himself, like many others all over the country, could be finished by the BSE scare.

He said: "This is the worst disaster that has happened in my life as a farmer and there doesn't seem to be any way out.

"The farmers have been blamed for feeding their cattle offal but it is the scientists who have fed this disease to cows.

"The beef farmers are innocent. All we have done is breed quality cattle and now we are the only ones who are paying.

"The dairy farmers are getting compensation for BSE cows but it is the beef market which is suffering and we are getting nothing.

"The Government must get confidence back in beef and the way to do that is to take the old dairy cows out of the food chain."

The knock-on effect of the scare has already started to affect industries further down the business chain.

Richard Day, manager of the cafe at the auction mart, will be forced to lay off some of his staff.

He said: "Market days are so busy that I have about 10 girls in the kitchens but I am going to have to put them all on short time until business picks up again - if it ever does." And haulage contractor William Procter spent a very quiet morning when his services were simply not needed.

He said: "I usually have a couple of trips every market day with the beef but I haven't moved with cattle today.

"It's a good job there are sheep and pigs to move elsewhere, otherwise I would be out of business.

"My work has been cut in half today and nobody can stand those sort of strains for long these days."

Dairy farmer Paul Kenny, from Standridge Farm, Slaidburn, added: "No-one is saying that it is a bad thing that BSE has been identified, what we want to stop is the spread of this fear by the Government and the media that all beef is bad.

"People who know the full facts are still eating beef and living to tell the tale."

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