World Trade deals, no easy answers for farmers or governments.

I recently had the privilege of meeting a group of farmers from the developing world who sell their produce through a fair trade company to European Markets. They were not downtrodden, but they were acutely interested in the way that their crops are sold here, and despite the fair trade tag, there is still a massive disparity between what they receive and what we pay. In some cases they are also restricted in how much of their produce they are allowed to send to our supermarket shells by tariffs and trade agreements.

The World Trade Organisation talks which have just collapsed in Geneva were about liberalising markets, removing those tariffs which stopped farmers in the developing world from freely selling their produce in Europe and the USA. Some of those countries also had tariffs of their own which stopped imports from the highly developed, highly technological developed world flooding in and squeezing out low yielding subsistence farmers, or newly established industries.

In the press much of the blame has been laid at the door of the Indian and Chinese delegations, wanting to keep the right to protect their own agricultural industries from competition from the West. However there is some sympathy, amongst anti-poverty campaigners, for the stand taken by countries from the developing world against the deal on the table.

The trouble is that these talks weren’t just about food and farming, they were also about industrial tariffs, and the west wanting fewer restrictions on access to markets, something which according to the charities would be hugely damaging for the fledgling industrial sector which is fuelling the growth of many of these countries. Action Aid laid the blame at the door of the EU and the US for trying to maintain subsidies to their farmers, and resisting the efforts of poorer countries to protect their own workers, saying that in the end it was better to have no agreement than a bad agreement.

Oxfam too was critical of the EU and US saying the lack of a deal was a wasted opportunity, however in a statement the organisation’s International Director Jeremy Hobbs said “At a time when prices are volatile, developing countries were right to fight for the flexibility to defend their smallest farmers and ensure food security.”

In the US cotton farmers will still get their subsidies, and in the EU billions of pounds will still be paid every year to arable farmers who are seeing some of the highest prices for their crops for several years.
The big problem though is that farming isn’t a single entity. Whist the barley barons are doing very well at the moment, many livestock farmers face a desperate struggle to find the cash to buy the feed for their animals. And those barley barons are in turn looking very carefully at the cost of planting next year’s crop. They will want to know in advance that the price they will get will match the increase in the cost of the fuel and the fertilizer needed to grow it.

The level of subsidies in Europe is decreasing, but farmers say that without these payments some of their crops simply aren’t worth growing. The question is whether taking away those payments would actually make a big difference to farmers in developing countries. In some cases, perhaps it would.

Perhaps an increase in the price of wheat on the world market might help farmers in developing countries get a better price for the alternative they could offer. Where the lack of an agreement really hurts is where there is competition, for instance in cotton where US growers receive a subsidy. Action Aid says the continuation of this will be a bitter blow to African cotton farmer who simply can’t compete.

But tariffs and trade restrictions are not always one-sided. As we’ve seen with the market for beef, it isn’t only the developing world that puts tariffs on imports; sometimes countries in South America put their own restrictions on their own exports. Argentina did this out of fear that beef shortages at home, caused by massive exports, could stoke inflation in the fragile Argentine economy.

Maybe at the heart of this would be a better world without any tariffs or subsidies. The trouble is that these measures are often linked, inextricably to somebody, somewhere needing the vote of an elector. Perhaps in the end the world food market is just so volatile that there was never going to be an agreement in this round of the WTO talks.

But maybe perhaps at a time of ever rising food prices and potential shortages some of the tariffs will have to go, just to ensure that the Western World stays fed. The question then will be whether the West sucks out of the developing world, the food that farmers need to feed their families and their fellow citizens.

Sun shines on Countryside jamboree after last year's washout.

Sometimes it feels like there can be too much of a good thing, and at this year's CLA Game Fair at Blenheim Palace there was almost too much sun. Farmers will be absolutely delighted to see the sun shine on their crops, and the Game Fair organisers will heave a sigh of relief that this year's event fared better than last year when the soggy ground at Harewood House in Leeds meant a last minute cancellation. This year the sun shone from day one, as a hundred and fifty thousand people flocked through the gates. The Game Fair is a bit different to other countryside events, for a start there is no livestock, so it has survived the various outbreaks of animal disease in the past few years, and partly because of this it is one of the few countryside events on the summer calendar where dogs are welcome. The Royal Highland is one of the few shows with livestock which allows dogs. The reason given by most show organisers where dogs are banned is our old friend 'elf and safety', with worries that should the pouch slip the lead it could cause livestock to panic, resulting in visitors being hurt. At the Game Fair the blazing heat of the weekend this made the doggy water stops with their bowls and hoses more than welcome.

Amongst the hundred and fifty thousand visitors were the Farm Minister Lord Rooker and the Conservative leader David Cameron who is also a local MP.

The Game Fair is always a good place for unveiling policies; in the past the CLA has used it to launch a campaign to get restaurants to reveal where their beef comes from, this year it was the turn of the anglers. Perhaps feeling a little left behind the publicity generated by Hunting and Shooting, several of the organisations representing the four million people who indulge in Britain’s most popular pastime, are to merge to give a stronger voice to those who fish for pleasure. Several debates were held at the Game Fair about the proposal.

Those behind the move deny it’s out of fear that after the ban on hunting, fishing will be the next target for animal rights campaigners. This is more about getting their voice heard in government circles. In particular anglers feel they want more done to improve the aquatic environment in return for the money they pay for their rod licence. They want improvements to water quantity as well as water quality. This for instance would mean changes to the way that houses are built and the planning system to ensure that surface drainage from new developments is free of the pollutants which could damage fish… things like heavy metals, solvents and fats.

The merger of the Angling Conservation Society, the National Federation of Anglers, the National Federation of Sea Anglers, the Specialist Anglers Alliance and the National Association of Fisheries and Angling Consultatives is likely to get the support of those involved in the sport. Infact these different bodies have been mulling over the idea of merging for almost a century. Now it looks likely to happen. A final name for the new body is yet to be decided, but for the moment the campaign goes under the banner of Angling Unity. Could I suggest `Worm Drowners Inc?’

Where’s the beef? - Farmers urged not kill `Cash Cows'

A couple of years ago the full horror of the Australian drought was brought home to me when, at a food trade show in Paris, the European representative of Meat and Livestock Australia told me that many beef farmers in affected areas were sending perfectly good breeding beef cows for slaughter to be eaten because there simply wasn’t enough water to keep them alive.

Now it seems that some farmers in the UK are sending their breeding cows to be slaughtered for meat for a very different reason. Because prices are so high, they are getting much more money than they would ever have anticipated, and they’re cashing in.

A good `suckler’ cow could have as many as ten calves during her lifetime, although seven or eight is nearer the norm for traditional breeds, falling to five for the commercial breeds. Until recently when beef from animals over thirty months old was banned from the human food chain these animal had to be processed under the Over Thirty Months Scheme…the OTMS, when they reached the end of their productive life. The sum paid for these animals, which were simply killeds and incinerated was small, maybe reaching two to three hundred pounds per head.

Now, with restriction lifted, older cows being sent for slaughter and which can be eaten, are getting as much as eight hundred pounds each according to the National Beef Association, the NBA, which is throwing its hands up in horror at this development. It believes the early killing of prime breeding stock depletes the supply of heifers and steers to eat which will be born in the future….and warns this is a bad move when the future is looking ever rosier for beef farmers.
OK, this might seem a bit strange, an organisation representing farmers actually predicting that prices will rise, and now is not the time for retrenchment or profit taking. But the NBA is probably right, world population isn’t going to fall, and there will continue to be an inexorable rise in the consumption of beef in the Far East. Add to that a reduction in the land area available for livestock in South America because soya or sugar cane is actually more profitable than meat, and such optimism makes sense.

However a big question mark hangs over all of this in the strength of the consumer economy in Europe, and particularly in the UK. A beef farmer with whom I talk regularly told me the other day that he firmly believes that if the economy continues to falter, in a few years time meat will become a weekly treat, not a daily staple.

The other big problem is that the price that farmers are getting for their beef may be rising ever faster, but so is the cost of producing that beef. This could wipe out any of the benefits from higher prices, so some farmers may see some sense in cashing in their `cash cows’ now whilst they can still make a fast buck.

For the consumer this could mean facing much higher beef prices five years `down the road’ when the supply of beef dries up, not just from European farmers but also from parts of the world, i.e. South America which were traditionally seen as an alternative when UK beef producers started asking to be paid more.

Small Abattoirs - Update. Hope for operators.

Just as news of a change to the way abattoirs are charged for the supervision of the Meat Hygiene Service, MHS, was announced, one of slughterhouses affected has sent me news of another possible change to the inspection regime, which might help to reduce the level of these fees for the smallest slaughterhouses.

At the moment an Official Vetinarian (OV) has to be present to inspect the animals before slaughter... ante mortem, and supervise the removal and disposal of specified risk material, the SRM, which is thought to be at most risk of carrying the prion whch causes BSE.

Under the new system, which the MHS says would only be practical for the smallest plants, the vet would still check the animals prior to slaughter. They would then leave and allow the killing and dressing of the carcass to take place handled soley by the abattoir staff. Later in the day the OV or a Meat Hygiene Inspector would return to check that the relevant parts of the animal, categorised as SRM had been removed and stained to show they are unfit for human consumption.

The new system would only apply to Pigs which can't get BSE. With the execption of those animals requiring testing for the disease Trichinella. Sheep, goats and cattle aged under thirty months. The latter three are thought to be a lower risk than cattle over thirty months of age.

Abattoirs would be given permission to work under this new system on a case by case basis, and would have to meet rigorous standards first, but it's the kind of approach which will be welcomed by the industry. Not least because according to a discussion document, the procedure which is called `Cold Inspection' is designed to make the operation of the MHS more efficient, and cut the cost of running it. Hopefully for the operators of these plants this will also mean a reduction in the fees they are charged as MHS staff will have to spend less time supervising them. Although those in the more remote parts of the country wonder whether inspection teams having to make two separate trips will save money above the same single vet carrying out both the ante and post mortem examinations.

Killing time for small abattoirs?

These are not easy times for small abattoirs. Once many butchers’ shops had a slaughterhouse attached, now the meat we eat is often killed many miles from where it was reared and where it finally ends up on sale.

A mixture of regulations and the economies of scale have led to the concentration of killing in large industrial plants a million miles removed from the countryside.

The first problem for many small abattoirs is that out of necessity they tend to be located close to people, and many people… particularly in urban areas do not like to the idea of animals being killed at the bottom of the garden. Most of them are of course happy enough to eat the meat that comes out at the end of the process, they just don’t like the idea of what goes on inside.

As the world moved on from the horrors and deprivation of the war years, the pressure was on to become a modern nation. Convenience led to a disconnection with the food we eat. By the nineteen seventies meat had moved from behind the butcher’s counter where it hung as a carcass, cut up in front of the customer, to the chiller cabinet where it sat ready prepared in polystyrene trays. With this move to convenience packaging came a move to a meat industry centralised into bigger players. It became more economic to move thousands of cattle and sheep, every week, to bigger plants where they could be killed and cut-up on a highly mechanised line in a similar fashion to the car industry.

This made the larger plants more efficient, and the smaller ones closed. At the start of the nineteen seventies there were almost nineteen hundred slaughterhouses in England, Scotland and Wales. Twenty five years later that number had fallen to just under five hundred. This year that number dropped below three hundred for the whole of the UK.

Many of these are the larger abattoirs, which can handle hundreds of animals a day. In the case of cattle, more than half the animals killed in England meet their end in just twenty of the largest plants, according to Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue documents setting out guidance for the valuation of business rates.

With sheep three quarters of the slaughter takes place in just seventy six plants, but in pigs four fifths of the British animals we eat are killed in just twenty slaughterhouses. This has as much to do with the specialist skills and equipment needed for dealing with pigs.

However what has really spelled the end for the small slaughterhouses is the increasing weight of regulation they have to follow. At the top of this list is a set of controls which are designed to protect meat eaters from BSE, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy. The disease was first discovered in the UK in 1986 and has been linked with a variation of a brain disease in humans, v-CJD, Variant-Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
A hundred and sixty four people in the UK are thought to have died have died from the disease since 1995 when it was first identified as being different from Classic CJD.

Research into BSE found that the prion, the infective agent which causes the disease, was thought to collect in certain parts of the animal, namely anything to do with the nervous system, the brain and for some reason the spleen. Controls were introduced which ruled that these parts of the body… given the title Specified Risk Material must be cut out and discarded.

There was also a growing feeling that BSE wasn’t just confined to cattle. There were suspicions that the disease had emerged from the practice of feeding sheep brains to cattle. A theory emerged that BSE originated from a similar sheep disease called scrapie. Sheep too became subject to rules on the removal of SRM.

Animals over a certain age are now required to have their spinal cord taken out.
All of this significantly ramped up the requirement for those who were doing the killing… or to be more accurate, the preparation of the carcass, to follow some pretty heavy duty rules. And rules mean just one thing these days… enforcement.

Both abattoirs and licenced red meat cutting plants, where the carcasses are butchered on an industrial scale are regulated by the Meat Hygiene Service, which is part of the Food Standards Agency. It provides the inspectors and official veterinarians, who have to be present every time animals are slaughtered.

Until now fees paid by these plants have been based on the number of animals needing to be inspected, so the smallest slaughterhouses paid the smallest fees. That though is about to change with the headage payment of the past replaced by a charge based on the number of hours MHS inspectors spend at the plants.

This is coupled to a twelve percent increase in all charges, and the introduction of a new charge for inspecting the removal of SRM.

The package of measures however will only reduce the subsidy paid by the taxpayer to the MHS from £28m to £25m per year. And many in the meat industry say the real answer lies in reducing the operating costs of the MHS. At the moment it costs £m91 per year to run, and Norman Bagley of the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) which represents the operators of small and medium sized plants reckons this can be reduced to about £50m-£55m. The FSA itself says it is aiming to reduce the operating costs of the MHS to £74m by 2012/13.

The FSA says small abattoirs will be protected under the new regime, but many within the industry fear quite a few will still disappear. This, according to supporters of this way of food production, will mean more food miles, greater stress for the animals and the potential for a greater risk of disease as animals are moved around the country to go to larger killing plants hundreds of miles away.


See inside a small abattoir - Noel Chadwick and Son Standish

Just when you think it's safe to go back in the cowshed...

You might recall that last year the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse decided to spend their summer holiday in the UK. After all there are a wide range of places offering stabling facilities... War and Conquest were taking a breather from some heavy-duty rampaging in the Middle East, Death was having a sulk, so, finding himself at a loose end, Pestilence decided to occupy those long summer days by generating a bit of misery across the land.

After a spot of ad hoc flooding, he turned his attention to spreading a bit of disease, and where better than the stockbroker belt of Surrey. Some impromptu re-plumbing on the drains of the Pirbright laboratory site shared by Merial, a veterinary pharmaceutical company and the Institute of Animal Health, the IAH, did the trick. An outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease led to eight farms being infected and just over two thousand animals slaughtered. It caused a summer of chaos for farmers, but why stop there.

On the other side of the channel rancid fetid midges, carrying a ghastly virus called Bluetongue were waiting to pounce. Actually the midges can't have been that rancid... they were well enough to fly across more than forty miles of water and pass the disease on to a Highland cow called Debbie on a rare-breeds farm in Suffolk.

The Culicoides midge which carries and transmits the Bluetongue Virus - picture courtesy Institute for Animal Health

Now to add to the misery of the foot and mouth restrictions which effectively brought a halt to livestock marts and agricultural shows a new set of restrictions were imposed because of Bluetongue.

I remember the day that Bluetongue was discovered was the day that the Langdon Beck show should have been happening. Langdon Beck is at the very top end of Teesdale in the North Pennines. It's a wonderful old fashioned sheep show, with just one trade stand from the local agricultural supplies company, and a bouncy castle. And lots of Swaledale Sheep.

The show had already been cancelled because of Foot and Mouth movement restrictions, and the chairman had organised a `cow day'. A `cow day' is a Dales euphemism for a massive drinking session. As I was about to join the farmers drowning their sorrows at the loss of their show, a text message from the DEFRA press office announced the arrival of Bluetongue, not unexpected but still shocking. I didn't have the heart to tell the farmers who had just lost their annual show.

Almost a year later the livestock industry is still reeling from the effects of Bluetongue. The virus causes symptoms similar to Foot and Mouth disease, but the one crucial difference is that it cannot be spread from animal to animal. Instead it is carried by a midge, the Culicoides, which sucks blood from an infected animal, and then infects other uninfected livestock as it moves around gorging itself. It affects all the animals which are susceptible to Foot and Mouth except pigs, which don't get it or carry it.

A sheep with Bluetongue - picture courtesy Institute for Animal Health

Although animals can't pass the infection directly to each other, those which have the virus are still a potential meal for a hungry midge. Because of that a series of movement restrictions were introduced, which aimed to limit the accessibility of these animals to midges. Within one hundred kilometres of an infection a Protection Zone is declared, beyond that a further fifty km is declared a surveillance zone.

Generally speaking in a Protection Zone animals can only move directly to slaughter, and are otherwise banned from leaving the area. In a Surveillance Zone animals can move freely within the zone, or from it to the Protection Zone but not to the disease free area outside. This has meant massive disruption for livestock markets, for agricultural shows and for owners of high value breeding animals who want to be able to trade them to the highest bidder.

Unlike Foot and Mouth disease, part of the control strategy for Bluetongue is widespread preventative vaccination. A vaccine against the serotype of the disease in the UK... BTV 8 has been developed and is being rolled out across the country. Farmers are paying about fifty pence per animal for the dose which they administer themselves. Animal health experts don't yet know how effective it is, but both they and the farming industry are keeping their fingers crossed.

Now however there is another threat lurking. In all there are twenty-four different varieties, or serotypes of the Bluetongue virus. The disease in the UK is serotype 8 BTV 8. What is worrying the scientists now is Serotype 1, BTV 1. It came to Europe last year from North Africa, landing in Gibraltar and killing four sheep. It then spread up the Iberian Peninsular before reaching the border with France last Autumn. Midge activity falls off when the temperature drops so it didn't get any further. Until now. Recently BTV 1 has started appearing in South West France, and is moving northwards at the rate of twenty kilometres every week.

What is particularly worrying is that the area affected by BTV 8, the one which is `over here', now overlaps with the BTV 1 area in Southern France. We're not talking mutation, but as Professor Peter Mertens from the Institute of Animal Health told me, the two varieties could end up `having sex' and swapping some of their characteristics... making the disease harder to tackle. The good news is that there is also a vaccine for the BTV 1 version of Bluetongue, as with BTV 8, however neither is effective against the other serotype. That means that if BTV 1 reaches the UK the whole vaccination process will be have to be carried out again.

The one ray of hope though is that it is unlikely that BTV 1 will get beyond Northern France this year which gives vets and the pharmaceutical companies a breathing space to manufacture more of the BTV 1 vaccine to cope with another invasion, should it happen.

Is healthy eating good for the countryside...?

We're on slightly virgin territory here. I like the countryside...and I love my food. Technically on the Body Mass Index...the all powerful BMI, I fall into the `Fat Bastard' category.

Some of this can be laid at the door of the brewing industry, some of it is down to eating too much food... not necessarily the wrong sort of food, just a lot of it. Much of the blame must lie in the fact that technically I'm a lazy `Fat Bastard'.

However I am trying to make an effort. I eat a stick of celery every week, and I have given up aubergines... arguably the world's most pointless vegetable... but every bit helps. I'm trying to eat healthily, but these things take time and effort.

We live in the age of virtuous eating. The Food Standards Agency's `five portions a day' slogan encouraging people to eat at least five portions of fruit or vegetables every day has to be the most recognised public information campaign since Tufty saved millions of the nation's children from an early death at the hands of the automobile industry.

Healthy food is big business, with entire chiller cabinets devoted to guilt free calories. Things like diary produce, and red meat have become the love that dare not speak its name. The nation is on the path to a long and healthy life, but can the same be said for the countryside?

An academic paper which has just been published by the Rural Economy and Land Use programme (RELU) based at Newcastle University has been looking at the relationship between farming, the food chain and the countryside.

In the first of a series of chapters colleagues from Reading University asked what would happen to our landscape if the population followed the kinds of advice being issued by the Department of Health and the FSA. Their conclusions make interesting reading.

If we eat fewer dairy products' the report says' this could lead to more farmers abandoning the milk parlour, in favour of crops or possibly livestock. If we eat less meat this could lead to the precarious hill-farming sector becoming unviable. The Reading scenario took as its benchmark the World Health Organisation guidelines for healthy eating. The researchers say that this, if followed by everybody, would mean a 75% drop in the consumption of cheese whilst the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables would increase by 50%.

In the case of the drop in consumption of red meat, which falls under this model by 15%, this would be made worse by competition from former dairy farmers who have switched to meat production in the lowlands, where the cost base is lower than in the hills. The end result could be the abandonment of hill farms, and a switch to massive `ranches'. There would also be an increase in demand for fruit and vegetables, and this might mean an increase in the Bete Noire of the `blight on the landscape' brigade, the polytunnel.

Of course healthy eating doesn't mean cutting out meat and dairy. Infact there is an argument out forward by the researchers that some of the methods used to produce healthier meat and dairy products, are infact very good for the countryside. For instance `grass-fed' meat has been found to be higher in beneficial fatty acids than meat from animals which have been fattened indoors on cereals.

Grass fed animals are good for the environment, and in some cases, in particular in the uplands they are also a vital tool for conservationists. For instance in the Yorkshire Dales traditional breeds of cattle are used because they can live, and thrive on the harsh limestone hills, whilst eating the invasive, tough, scrubby plants that the the sheep are `too posh to nosh'. Under the Limestone Country project which has just come to an end, farmers were encouraged to use breeds such as Dexter, and Highland and Luing. The beef was specially marketed, meaning the farmers got a better price for what they produced.

So the conclusion is that not only do you change the attitudes of people towards eating healthy food, but you change the composition of that food so that it is both healthy to eat and good for the landscape. Strawberries which are produced under plastic which allows ultra-violet light to come through, rather than in polytunnels have, according to the researchers, a better nutrition value, although the yields are lower.

Grass-fed beef is also more expensive to produce than its intensive counterpart. The message is that people must be prepared to pay more for their food if it is to be healthy for them, and healthy for the landscape in which it is produced. Something which may cause problems for people on low incomes.

Of course this vision of the future is based on a model which accepts that people will change their eating habits to consume only healthy food. That is highly unlikely, especially if that food is more expensive at a time of recession.

It’s showtime…..

There was book I once never bothered to read called `God is an Englishman’ by R.F.Delderfield…who also wrote `To Serve Them All My Days’, well actually the almighty is a Yorkshire man… or woman.

Last year’s Royal Show at Stoneleigh in Warwickshire was a washout…. So much so that the final day had to be cancelled to the public because the conditions under foot were just too dangerous and boggy.

By contrast the Great Yorkshire, no need for royalty in the name here….Great will suffice, was bathed in sunshine. This year the Royal was hit by reduced numbers of animals and slightly disappointing visitor numbers. The first day of the Great Yorkshire, celebrating its hundred and fiftieth birthday ended with throngs of people, and bathed in glorious evening sunshine, even if the weather was a bit iffy earlier in the day. I suspect this might have been instigated by the posse of bishops I passed as I was walking into the showground.

Farming is very much an isolated business. Long, and physically demanding days spent either trying to cox machinery back to life or attempting the same with sheep. Very few forage harvesters have an overwhelming desire to turn their toes up. With the decline of auction marts, and indeed livestock farming, there's little opportunity to socialise. Trade shows, are one way of getting to meet those of a like mind, but the highlight of the short summer hiatus before the harvest begins is the traditional agricultural show. They're also an opportunity to gain the approval, and admiration of your peers.

At the heart of every show there is the competition, whether it's the big national shows like the Royal, or the regional ones like the Great Yorkshire and the East of England. These competitions, the classes, the best in show matter. The animals entered are gliding along in the fast lane of the gene pool. This is the stock that all the most dedicated farmers want for their blood lines. A Win at the Royal, or the Great Yorkshire can be worth thousands of pounds, not in the relatively small prize money on offer, but in the resale value in the semen or the embryos of the cattle, or the sale of the sheep or pigs themselves.

Then there's the chance to press the flesh. The big movers and shakers in farming must be seen at the shows. NFU President Ptere Kendall was one of the visitors on the first day of the Great Yorkshire, Hilary Benn will be there in the Thursday, as will be the Queen... no doubt he'll get much more of an ear-bending about badgers than she will.

NFU President Peter Kendall at the 2008 Great Yorkshire Show

It's the chance for those who lobby on behalf of farming to test the water, to get a feel of what the countryside is really thinking. Some farmers prefer to avoid the general shows, prefering instead the specialist trade events, but for others events like the Great Yorkshire are a vital social lifeline which keeps them just the right side of the line between hope and despair.

The badger lives...for the moment?

It’s unusual to have a minister, who tells it the way it is, but Lord (Call me Jeff) Rooker invariably has something interesting to say…even if you can see the fixed smiles on the faces of his civil servants begin to sag slightly as their minister wanders dangerously off the path of righteousness and says something interesting into a microphone. More about Lord Rooker later but first my own failings.

I gave up biology at the age of thirteen, having to ditch it in favour of physics and chemistry, and history at what was then…in a more innocent age, called `O-levels’.

Sadly the glamorous world of animal science lost a razor sharp mind to the rather humdrum life of a radio journalist.

As a consequence I haven’t a clue whether it is badgers which cause the spread of Bovine TB amongst cattle, or whether cattle spread it to each other with badgers as collateral damage.

For farmers with cattle though the indisputable fact is that their animals are dying because of the disease… or more accurately because of the culling measures to control its spread. Just over fourteen thousand have been killed as a result of control measure in the first three months of this year alone. Ten years ago less than half that number were dispatched in the whole year.

And it costs money too. Last year about eighty million pounds to the taxpayer, and millions more to the farming industry.

The possibility of a link between badgers and the spread of bovine TB first emerged blinking into the daylight in the early nineteen seventies when a badger which had died from bovine TB was found on a farm in Gloucestershire, in an area with a high number of cattle infections, technically known as breakdowns. An extensive programme of badger culling followed in the area and bovine TB disappeared from there, at least for the next ten years.

There followed years of the kind of deliberations which make this country great… or not as some would see it. Inquiries, followed reviews which went hand in hand with investigations…. And then in the late nineteen nineties a trial was ordered to see what impact different culling regimes might have on the spread of the disease. The Krebs trial, overseen by John… now Lord Krebs, an eminent zoologist, involved splitting up areas where bovine TB was rife into three zones, known as triplets. In one zone all the badgers were culled, in another badgers were only killed where there were outbreaks of TB, reactive culling, and the third zone was used as a control where no badgers were culled.

The trial was seriously disrupted by the foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001 when no testing could take place because of access restrictions to the countryside, and received another huge blow two years later when reactive culling was suspended because it appeared to make the problem worse by dispersing the sick badgers to other uninfected areas.

The Krebs trial or to give it it’s `Sunday Name’ the Randomised Badger Culling Trial was overseen by a group of independent scientists, the Independent Scientific Group ISG which was asked to analyse and draw conclusions from what information was available from the Krebs Trial. Under John Bourne a formerly Professor of Animal Health at Bristol University the ISG deliberated for nearly ten year, and concluded that although total or almost total elimination of badgers over a wide area might have a role to play in the control of bovine TB the type of local culls envisaged by farmers would result in the `control of cattle TB in a manner which is economically viable’

Just a matter of weeks after the ISG’s recommendations were published, Sir David King the government’s own chief scientist lobbed a hand grenade into the proceedings, saying badgers represented a massive reservoir of TB in the wild, and called for selective culls in areas affected by the disease.

Which is where it’s very useful to have a minister who actually has something enlightening to say, and my ears pricked up at this year’s annual general meeting of the National Farmers Union, where during a debate which he was actually chairing …. I can think of few other government ministers could pull that one off … Lord Rooker put his finger on the reason why it had taken so long to reach a decision on whether or not badger culling should go ahead.

Agriculture Minister Lord Rooker

He basically said… and I’m working purely from memory here, as I was busy dealing with something else at the time and only half listening to the debate… `Look guys… I know you’re desperate … I know you want a decision, but the truth of the matter if that ministers can only act one scientific advice where that advice is clear cut, and at the moment there are two eminent scientific viewpoints which disagree, and if we’re not absolutely certain about the science, the first thing that will happen is an application for judicial review… and then the whole matter would be dragged through the courts just prolonging the difficulty of actually tackling the problem.’

My apologies if I didn’t get the exact wording of what he said but I think that’s a pretty accurate reflection. And it was fascinating, perhaps the government wasn’t scared of the public reaction to a possible cull, it was the likelihood that it would all end up in the courts, and if there’s one thing that politicians hate more than public disapproval of their policies, it’s the judiciary telling them they goofed.

Ironically as rumours of the government deciding against a cull start to circulate, so do rumours of possible legal action by the NFU. In the end the winners from bovine TB might turn out to be M’learned friends.

A Hunting here we go again?

Deep in the bowels of the countryside’s awkward squad something stirs. The Countryside Alliance is on the march again or at least taking to its 4x4s. Having declared that the Hunting Act of 2004 was the most useless, unenforceable discredited piece of legislation ever passed by parliament the CA is taking advantage of the change in the political wind to start the practical business of getting rid of it.

With the very real prospect that Labour might not win the next election, and that David Cameron might be heading for the kind of landslide which saw Tony Blair and New Labour swept to power in 1997, the Alliance has now set up a committee to get the act repealed.

The Alliance has always said it is `apolitical’ but it’s quite clear from what their members say that there won’t be many tears shed over the demise of Labour, as it will serve the hunting lobby’s purposes well.

David Cameron has promised a free vote on repealing the act if he becomes Prime Minister. It’s fairly safe to assume the outcome would be in favour of ditching a piece of legislation which is loathed by the Tory faithful and some `Blairites’ as a symbol of what is perceived as the New Labour class struggle, and one of the few victories for the old guard over the `Modernisers’.

However there are some fences to jump first. For a start the Tories will need a majority… not just because they will need to overcome any anti-hunting sentiment in their own party…although the prime supporter of a ban, Maidstone MP Anne Widdicombe is standing down from Parliament at the next election, but it will make sure the act is repealed without too much hassle. The other possible problem is that the Tories will be running around repealing just about anything they can get their hands on…and supporters of hunting will want their cause to be at the head of the queue.

They’ll have to mud-wrestle for this one with the Estate Agents who want rid of Home Information Packs, and the NIMBYs who want eco-towns demolished before they’re even built…Then there’s the small matter of the economy to sort out. It will be a busy first parliament. If there is a sizeable Conservative majority though, repealing the Hunting Act will be relatively straightforward and the House of Lords won’t throw up too many objections so it probably won’t take up too much parliamentary time.

One of the biggest difficulties, `politically’ over hunting is that it’s the kind of thing that makes the `New Tories’ nervous, and worry that they might be seen as reverting to their old ways. Appealing to the modern middle classes might not sit too well with packs of hounds and followers chasing the fox. The urban voters the Tories need to win over are still squeamish about the idea of hounds closing in on the fox, even if in many cities foxes have become a nuisance.

There is another problem too. During the campaign against the hunting bill there was some support for a `Middle Way’ option, where hunts would be licensed. This was fiercely opposed by a lot of hunts. The Alliance will be watching closely to see that the act is repealed with no strings attached.