KENDAL Auction Mart has started work as a collection centre for livestock on its way to slaughter.

Farmers can now take sheep and cattle to the mart, under licence, where they will join other animals destined for the abattoir.

Auctioneer Kevin Kendal said the pace had been busy since the service began and orders were coming in regularly.

The problem at the moment, he said, was that the price of lamb had fallen sharply.

At £1.50 per kilo, it was now selling at about half the price of lamb on the Continent.

The drop in price had been blamed on over-supply in the home market after foot-and-mouth restrictions put paid to the export market, which accounted for around 30 per cent of British lamb.

The collection centre service at Kendal Auction Mart is particularly useful to the area's hill farmers because it means they can send relatively small numbers of animals to abattoir as part of a larger group.

Video auctions could become a feature at Kendal Auction Mart in coming months, after a demonstration of a video auction this week.

Kevin Kendal said: "It is just one option we are exploring to sell breeding and store stock this autumn."

To contact Kendal Auction Mart about collection centre service or disinfection call 0700-4536325 or 01539-720603.

Meanwhile, at Penrith Farmers and Kidds Auction Mart in Penrith, farmers who have lost stock heard that the disaster of foot-and-mouth infection could have presented them with a "golden opportunity."

Mike Fell from Barclays Bank which ran the seminar, told farmers that after the 1967 outbreak, many farms in the Cheshire area benefited from restocking out of the ashes: "to some extent, that is where Cumbria is at the moment," he said.

He said that for some farming families, getting out of farming altogether would be the right thing to do, but those who choose to continue had a chance like no other to design from scratch a farming system which worked for them.

Chris Dodds from PF and Ks said that with so many farms wanting to restock, there are worries that new stock could become prohibitively expensive "My big concern is making sure that we can get farms back with livestock at a figure that they can realistically continue farming.

We have to be sure that in 12 to 18 months time thy do not feel that they have over-invested," he said.