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Gordon Gatward, director of the church-backed Arthur Rank Center, a key support organization for farmers, says he has seen "grown men crying—they don't know where to turn."

Counseling telephone helplines run by the Samaritans, which has links to the Befrienders international movement, are receiving rising numbers of calls from farmers in despair or tempted to commit suicide. Even before the crisis, suicides among farmers in England and Wales averaged more than one a week, according to a Samaritans spokesperson.

Foot and mouth disease has already produced more than 600 outbreaks in the U.K., mainly among sheep but also affecting cattle and pigs. The crisis is not expected to peak until May. More than 600,000 animals have been condemned for slaughter. Many of them are healthy and are being culled in a bid to put "firebreaks" around diseased stock.

The disease is also prompting a growing political crisis in London, with accusations both here and abroad that Tony Blair's government has mishandled the situation. The government faces a general election within the next year, and reports that the prime minister wants polling day to be set for May 3, despite the foot and mouth crisis, are causing deep unease in some quarters. However, a number of influential newspapers are urging the prime minister to hold a May election.

Foot and mouth cases apparently connected to Britain have been reported in Ireland, France, and The Netherlands.

Thousands more animals in disease-free flocks and herds cannot be moved or sold, measures which in any case mean financial disaster for farmers. On the Duke of Westminster's estate in Cheshire, northern England, three farm workers were reported to have been locked into a barn with prize pedigree bulls to reduce the chances of the foot and mouth virus reaching the valuable herd.

The crisis has also sharply affected rural tourism, particularly because two of Britain's main tourism areas—Devon and Cumbria—are among those worst affected by foot and mouth disease. The countryside is closed to tourists in many areas because of the risk of the airborne virus being carried out on clothes and shoes.

Churches all over the country are contributing to a relief fund for farmers and farm workers. The fund is being administered by the Arthur Rank Center, based at Britain's permanent agricultural showgrounds in Warwickshire, central England.

Gatward, a Methodist minister, says the fund had already collected 500,000 pounds (US$725,000), which it is paying out in amounts of up to 2,000 pounds ($2,900) each to help with immediate needs like animal feed and cash for freelance workers with no work.

With farm incomes likely to be affected for months, Gatward acknowledged that these small grants would be needed repeatedly.

"How confident am I of the fund coping?" he said. "People are very generous. We go by faith."

The fund is certain to be boosted after the Church of England's two most senior bishops, Dr George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Dr David Hope, Archbishop of York, called on Anglicans to use Mother's Day (celebrated in the U.K. March 25) as a special opportunity to help those in need in rural areas.

They asked congregations to pray for the affected communities, and to hold special collections at the end of services.

"The church, with its network of parishes across the country—in urban and rural areas alike—can play an important role in fostering that sense of shared commitment and concern," the archbishops said. "For parishes in country areas, the church has long been a focal point of community life and activity. There are church networks—formal and informal—that have sought to help rural communities through recent farming crises—and once again we know they will do all they can to offer succor and support."

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March (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45