OKEHAMPTON Chamber of Trade will be encouraging shoppers to buy local food when the foot and mouth crisis is over, in a bid to help farmers rebuild their livelihoods.

One of the first towns in the South West to run a regular farmers' market, Okehampton has always promoted the message — local food for local people and made residents more aware of the food that can be grown in their own back yards.

Speaking at the chamber of trade's meeting last Thursday which was called to discuss the effect of foot and mouth disease on local businesses, chamber chairman Ian Bailey said he did not wish to detract in any way from the awful state of the agricultural industry.

'Farmers are really suffering and all our sympathy and support goes out to them,' he said. 'One of the things we can do when this crisis is over is to encourage people to buy local produce and we will be looking at other ways in which we can help the farming community.

'If anything comes out of this crisis it will be that people will be more aware of what they are putting on their plate in the long-term.'

Owner of Heathfield House guest house, Audrey Gibbons, said out of all this bad there had to be some good.

'We have had BSE and salmonella and it takes something like this to bring home to the common man on the street who cannot get his bacon or his lamb chops how much the country depends on the rural economy.'

Landlady of the Plymouth Inn, Jill Hoather, said the atmosphere in the pub at the moment was like the period of time between a death and a funeral.

'You steer the conversation away and within two minutes it's back,' she said.