For the 30,000 farming families in Northern Ireland, foot-and-mouth disease could represent one crisis too many. Still grappling with the BSE beef ban, the negative effect of the strength of sterling on exports, and an estimated 79 per cent drop in farm incomes over five years, the outbreak will fully test the remaining resilience of the industry.
According to Mr Joe McDonald (29), spokesman of the Ulster Farmers' Union, the fact retail prices have risen during the crisis in the absence of any supply shortage while prices for farmers have plummeted represents yet another example of the raw deal apportioned to farmers in the North.
"The whole mood in the farming industry is that this just might be one crisis too many and it's going to be a turning point. Farmers are in no mood to be taken advantage of any more - someone is profiteering and it's certainly not the farming community."
He believes the supply chain from farm gate to supermarket which demands increasingly lower prices for primary produce is just one aspect of the industry's structure that will need to be examined in the "post-mortem" on foot-and-mouth.
Illegal trading of animals has also emerged as a central issue and he confirms there is anger among "genuine" farmers that the activities of the few had risked the livelihoods of many by bringing the disease to the North.
At the beginning of March the disease was tracked to a farm in Meigh, south Armagh. Twenty one sheep of an infected consignment from Carlisle, northern England, transported with a licence for immediate slaughter, were found grazing. A total of 1,650 animals were slaughtered in a 1km zone around the farm.
The remainder, believed now to have been up to 350 sheep and not 291 as stated on official documents, is thought to have been smuggled into the Republic. "As long as the disease is so rampant in Great Britain we are always under threat. Never mind the fact that we have a question mark over whether or not sheep still exist in Northern Ireland, or somewhere on the island of Ireland, that may have been in contact with infectious animals.
"Until the Department investigators get full co-operation from the people involved they can't say they know definitively where all the sheep are and we can't be definite of another outbreak," Mr McDonald said.
Earlier this week there were fears of a second case but preliminary tests on a "hot suspect" case of the disease in Co Tyrone, proved negative.
In the absence of further outbreaks by early April, the union's immediate "timetable to exit the crisis" is to have the export ban lifted on the North by receiving regional status from the European Commission.
Mr McDonald stresses the decision by the North's Minister of Agriculture, Mrs Brid Rodgers, to place an immediate ban on importation of animals and products from Britain gave the North a realistic chance of fighting the disease.
The union is satisfied with the Minister's handling of the crisis and believes her Department has shown "110 per cent commitment" in fighting the outbreak. However, Mr McDonald believes the handling of the crisis has now entered a "crucial phase" as efforts continued to maintain public support for farmers.