AS if farmers devastated by the foot and mouth disease epidemic have not suffered enough anguish already, now we have reports of the government cutbacks that could leave hundreds of farms out of action for the rest of the year.

Lancashire and rural communities just over the border have been among those hit hardest by this dreadful crisis.

And just how severely they have been affected was revealed only days ago when we reported how many farms had had their turnovers wiped out and that the first farmer in East Lancashire to have his animals culled had been forced to give up farming and was now doing odd jobs to make ends meet.

It is bad enough that innocent people have to endure such pain and hardship, but, it is, surely, cruel that it should be prolonged by back-door government curbs on the clean-up operations at the farms that have been hit by the disease.

For it is claimed today that a halt to the cleansing and disinfecting process had been secretly called after it was found that the average cost was more than £100,000 on each farm in England -- a bill Prime Minister Tony Blair said was unacceptable because it came to only £30,000 per farm in Scotland and in Europe was only a tenth of that in Britain.

But while the government may be quite right to seek the best value for money from the taxpayer and to put a stop to any exploitation of the crisis by clean-up contractors, it is not fair for it at the same time to punish farms caught in the middle by keeping them out of business for even longer.

Nor is it scrupulous for this blow to be delivered surreptitiously when affected farms were promised by the Prime Minister itself that they would receive whatever practical resources were needed.

For the sake of British farming and for the thousands of people whose livelihoods depend on it, the clean-up must continue.

And if the government is concerned at the cost -- now running at £2million a day and expected to amount to £800million eventually -- it should set its auditors on the job to examine individual bills and see whether a rip-off is rife.

Then, it need only declare that will only pay fair charges and will take action to claw back payments were overcharging is found.

There is no need for farms to suffer more in the meantime -- and every reason why they should not.