The state is continuing “to find loopholes” to avoid compensation payments for foot and mouth (FMD) affected livestock units, the Voice for Livestock Breeders association claimed on Wednesday.

“It’s unacceptable for the president himself to come… and say, ‘Pay for the animals we’ve culled and counted,’ while the [veterinary services] focus on the financial aspects and try to find laws, clauses, and articles to cite in order to find a way to avoid paying people,” the organisation’s president Neophytos Neophytou told Alpha TV’s Kalimera show.

Neophytou said that although President Nikos Christodoulides had issued explicit directives for the compensation payments, the veterinary services were seeking “legal loopholes to avoid payments”.

He emphasised that large livestock units had been impacted, with remuneration amounting to several million euros.

The director of the veterinary services, Christodoulos Pipis, firmly rejected Neophytou’s accusations.

He clarified that compensation was only granted to those livestock farmers who met legal provisions and kept their database up to date, citing an example of a farm which had declared 6,000 animals but was subsequently found to have only 1,000.

Responding to Pipis, Neophytou argued that the veterinary services knew about errors in the system for years and had “simply overlooked” them, only to remember them now, leaving producers exposed.

“Then Mr Pipis, why didn’t you inform the livestock farmers before killing their animals that they would not be paid?” he said.

Pipis restated that the onus for accurately declaring the animal population was on the livestock farmer alone, not the state, however, he vowed to examine each situation on its own merits.

The dispute surfaced after President Nikos Christodoulides met with experts and interest groups in late May to discuss the government’s further handling of the FMD outbreak which the island has been battling since February, leading to the culling of thousands of animals.

The meeting was preceded by a cabinet decision in the middle of May, confirming that the total sum of compensation allocated to affected farmers would amount to approximately €35.6 million, marking up to 200 per cent more than the compensation paid per animal in other EU countries.

Meanwhile almost all pending culling of animals from farms was completed by Saturday, with the agricultural ministry announcing the culling of around 6,650 animals within the space of two days.

As of Tuesday no new case of foot and mouth had been reported.