February 9th 2010 ~ Public Administration Select committee "deeply concerned" by DEFRA's refusal to compensate farmers

The story below (new window) about DEFRA's defiance to Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, following her finding that there was maladministration by the RPA in the implementation of the 2005 Single Payment Scheme has now led to the PASC Select Committee telling Mr Benn to "take another look" The Labour MP Tony Wright, chairman of the public administration select committee, says in a letter to Mr Benn, that the committee was "mystified" about why the Government will not pay out and that the reasons with which DEFRA tries to explain its position "give the impression of a Department looking for arguments to dispute the Ombudsman's findings." He spoke of DEFRA's
"taking an adversarial rather than a common-sense, compassionate approach to people who have undoubtedly suffered injustice..... The Ombudsman's job is to be an independent, expert investigator where citizens complain that they have suffered injustice as a result of public bodies providing a poor service. The Government's response ought to be based on a presumption that the Ombudsman has got it right, particularly as in this case where the Ombudsman has had no shortage of opportunity to consider the Government's views on her draft findings before she has finalised her report. It does not seem to us that Defra has been working from this standpoint.
Hopes that DEFRA was on its way to becoming a more human department since the grim days of FMD seem doomed to disappointment. Read the text of PASC's letter to Hilary Benn in full (See also RPA page)

Feb 8th 2010 ~ USDA has announced that its much-criticised National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is no more.

Instead it will opt to develop "a new, flexible framework for animal disease traceability in the United States" To its opponents, such as the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA), NAIS was a David versus Goliath battle. The scheme was introduced in April 2005 intended to be a compulsory register to tag every livestock and farm animal in the United States; 29 species and over a half billion animals. The stated purpose of the NAIS was to track animals in a disease outbreak.
The cost of tagging and reporting - to be borne by all animal owners, whether their animals were being sold for consumption or not - and the time required to comply with the regulations would have put many small farmers out of business. For more detail see Google News results.

Feb 8th 2010 ~ "...the assumption appears to be that conventional industrial agriculture which is responsible for most of the global food system's enormous and growing vulnerabilities will somehow shoulder the task of feeding seven to nine billion humans..

...We just need to continue with what we are already doing, but on a larger scale and using more gene-engineered crop varieties." So says a weary Richard Heinberg. "Officially, peak energy is not even a concern, so evidently the strategy being adopted here is denial. We'll see how that works out."
".....I had thought that world leaders would want to keep their nations from collapsing. They must be working hard to prevent currency collapse, financial system collapse, food system collapse, social collapse, environmental collapse, and the onset of general, overwhelming misery - right? But no, that's not what the evidence suggests. Increasingly I am forced to conclude that the object of the game that world leaders are actually playing is not to avoid collapse; it's simply to postpone it a while..." Read in full
No less a person than Richard Branson will attempt to warn ministers this week that the world actually is running out of oil and faces an oil crunch within five years - a crisis more serious than the credit crunch (See The Guardian) Perhaps the message coming from Richard Branson will have some sort of effect. Meanwhile Richard Heinberg warns that readers "with a low tolerance for bad news should turn back now; there are lots of cheerier articles on the Internet and this might be a good time to find and enjoy one."

8th February 2010 ~ Food policy specialists shouldn't be tricked by flawed science funded by well placed, anti-meat, agitators, says the National Beef Association

The UK government has often said that it is science, not argument and counter-argument by self-interested lobby groups, that must guide its decision making. The NBA's press statement today warns policy makers to be aware that livestock and meat production is regularly targeted by influential, and well-funded groups
"...tactics very often concentrate on undermining consumer confidence by linking meat eating with fear of disease, like cancer, or generating misplaced concern over the role farmed livestock might play in accelerating climate change...." Read in full
As Christopher Thomas-Everard has written:
"the vegetarian alternatives of lentils, pulses and cereals all require tractor fuel.. it takes ten units of fossil fuel energy to produce every unit of this type of food. In contrast, grass-fed UK beef involves less food miles, has higher health giving omega 3 levels, provides otherwise unobtainable forms of iron and vitamins and reduces the use of fertiliser used in farming because of the organic matter co-product (dung) cows leave behind. ..and huge environmental gains in a greater weight per square metre of earthworms for the birds and animals, like moles, shrews, and badgers, which follow where cattle graze."
One website page beefing about meat eating is here - but there are already many intelligent readers' comments refuting a lot of it. (See also the NBA's In defence of Cattle)

8th February 2010 ~ GM in India: "Monsanto is looking for control with the introduction of Bt brinjal ..."

Brinjal" is another name for aubergine. Monsanto's genetically modified version produces a protein in the vegetable cells that induces antibiotic resistance. (source: www.i-sis.org.uk)
Today, the former managing director of Monsanto in India himself, is quoted in the Indian press in a surprising warning against Monsanto's plans:
" ... Once Bt brinjal is introduced and the gene is released, it is bound to contaminate the natural brinjal.
..Monsanto is looking for control and with the introduction of Bt brinjal the control enters the bio-diversity of India. Once the gene is released, it would for sure destroy the 2,400 different varieties of natural brinjal that the Indian farmers grow...."
A final decision is expected on Wednesday. (More detail on GM page)

Feb 6th/7th 2010 ~ For DEFRA's CSA, Bob Watson, the findings of the BBC poll are "very disappointing".

The BBC yesterday revealed that 73% (of the random sample of 1,001 adults) are now not convinced that climate change is man-made.
The so-called "consensus" on AGW has been useful. Alarm, it is recognised, makes people accept unwelcome necessities - such as the need to conserve energy and find alternatives. Dwindling cheap energy from oil and gas do make this essential. But what may be causing such a shift in opinion is the growing suspicion that manipulation of data is being used to manipulate people.
Matt Ridley in the Spectator offers praise for the serious internet bloggers, such as Anthony Watts, at wattsupwiththat.com and Stephen McIntyre at climateaudit.org. He comments:
"When Climategate broke, the mainstream media, like knights facing archers at Crécy, mostly ran dismissive pieces .... One by one they took notice...For those few mainstream journalists who had always been sceptical - like Christopher Booker - it must be a strange experience, like being relieved after living behind enemy lines. ...."
(See also the Telegraph's "Climate makes money move in mysterious ways" by Christopher Booker today on "..the veil of obscurity our Government draws over the astronomical sums it is paying out in support of its religious belief in "climate change"..".)

Feb 6th 2010 ~ The Conservatives are not committed to this "Animal Health" Bill

An article yesterday in the Farmers Guardian by Alistair Driver looking closely at the Bill notes that while the Conservatives acknowledge the potential benefits in principle of sharing costs and responsibility, they are likely to want to make significant changes or even drop it altogether.
"One obvious point of tension is how these plans for a brand new animal health body would tie in with the Tories' stated aim of slimming down Government quangos."
As for Rosemary Radcliffe's group (see cost sharing page) Alistair Driver says that DEFRA has been accused of being premature in publishing the Draft Bill when Rosemary Radcliffe's RCS advisory group is not due to report until December on its work in developing details of the policy. Read full article

Feb 6th 2010 ~ "We are very concerned about the government's determination to split health from welfare."

Madeleine Campbell, president of the British Equine Veterinary Association is quoted in Horse and Hound today:
"BEVA and the British Veterinary Association [BVA] believe this will have an adverse effect on welfare and disease containment. There will not be sufficient co-ordination between the two bodies and that will slow everything down in the case of an exotic disease outbreak."
Read article

Feb 5th 2010 ~Farmers' frustration with the new draft "Animal Health" Bill

In typical DEFRASpeak, the DEFRA spokesman quoted by Farmers Weekly spoke of the government's plans on cost-sharing as a means of
"incentivising" animal-keepers to "take on their full responsibility for the management of animal health issues."
The NFU has called the draft legislation "unfit for purpose". As Farmers Weekly says, this is less than a fortnight into a 12-week consultation. Rob Newbery, the NFU chief adviser, is quoted as saying that the draft Bill would give farmers only a limited say in the new body, and since plans for costs won't be unveiled until a future Finance Bill reveals them, the new body itself will have no say on how funds are raised. Farmers could find themselves faced with taxes imposed by the Treasury because they own livestock. Measures to reduce or withhold compensation from livestock-keepers "deemed to have contributed to the circumstances that require their animal to be slaughtered" are unworkable, Mr Newbery said,
"It may sound a sensible approach, but it would be impossible to set out guidance by which a government official could make a proportionate, risk-based decision on the vastly different farming systems and animal diseases."
Read Farmers Weekly and our most recent posts on the issue of Cost Sharing.

Feb 5th 2010 ~ EIA : unsubstantiated reports that horses were taken to sale rings all over the country over Christmas and New Year

Horse and Hound reports that DEFRA has traced one horse from the shipment of Romanian horses that came to the UK via Belgium which was moved from the yard in Wiltshire currently under isolation and the only premises still under movement restrictions. It has tested negative so far. No other equines wereave been taken on or off the Wiltshire premises.
"..Defra said on Wednesday that two horses have been traced in Britain that came into contact with an EIA-positive horse in Belgium. He said they have tested negative, and that further tests are pending - but their whereabouts is not specified."
See Horse and Hound report.

Feb 4th 2010 ~ Unclear how many horses have now been tested for Equine Infectious Anaemia (Swamp Fever)

Horse and Hound reports that DEFRA says it has traced all equines that came into contact with the two horses with swamp fever humanely put down in Wiltshire in January (see below) and that while initial tests on contacts have proved negative the horses need more tests at 30 and 60 days.
The DEFRA spokesman "could not confirm this morning whether any more premises in the UK are in isolation - or how many horses have been tested". The ProMed moderator comment in January is here and cases found in Belgium were reported on ProMed yesterday. The farm owner in Wiltshire regularly sources his animals from continental Europe. Horse and Hound says "widespread speculation suggests he is a large-scale dealer and that many hundreds of horses pass through the yard each month."

Feb 4th 2010 ~ Farmers in East Anglia devastated by Birdseye's cancellation of its contract with pea growers.

One writes, " Like other farmers, we belong to a syndicate, which has just invested in new machinery - and of course it means that late in the year we have to rethink the rotations..." Birds Eye says the decision is owing to the loss of a substantial export contract with an Italian business. The NFU has now called on Birds Eye to reconsider its decision (See Farmers Guardian this afternoon)

Feb 4 2010 ~ "probably backed by powerful corporate interests determined to thwart concerted action against global warming"

Hot on the heels of the claim by Sir David King that it was evidently foreign spies who hacked the CRU emails, Rajendra Pachauri, in the FT, has rounded on his critics, calling climate change sceptics' criticism "skulduggery of the worst kind" and, while ruling out any idea of resigning, talks of "nefarious designs behind people trying to attack me with lies, falsehoods, that I have business interests..."
As Dr North, who with Christopher Booker actually was the catylist behind the serious questioning of IPCC data and its Chairman's motives, wryly comments today,
"...now, variously, my little free-lance effort has become part of "an organised, systematic and vicious attack by powerful and well-funded lobbies in the developed world" backed by "powerful corporate interests determined to thwart concerted action against global warming" (probably).
I wish...."
Read in full (the doctored photo alone is worth clicking the link) Very strongly recommended to anyone who wants to know more about data manipulation by the IPCC is this YouTube video by Professor Bob Carter, described yesterday by a much respected emailer at the BBC as "one of several sceptics in Oz and USA with impeccable credentials..." (Another YouTube video with Bob Carter. An emailer remarks, "His comparison of the Warmers to a scene in a William Hogarth painting is hilarious and apropos."

February 3rd 2010 ~ government scientists spinning, writhing and fainting in coils

A month ago a Times comment article "Can we really trust chief scientific officers? warned:
"... They know they can get away with it because laymen have an irrational respect for words uttered by scientists.. .. ...."
On Monday it made us smile wanly to see former chief scientific advisor, Sir David King, (whose legacy we attempted to sum up two years ago in the blog post 7 pillars of piffle) asserting (Independent) that a "foreign intelligence agency" or "wealthy US lobbyists" were behind the hacking and release of the CRU emails - when in fact everything pointed to a whistleblower at East Anglia having released the single zip file. By Tuesday, Sir David had told the Guardian that actually he had "possessed no inside information about the leaks" and had merely been "speculating on material already in the public domain."
Usually, one feels a sneaking sympathy for those with egg on their faces - but it is hard to feel any warmth for the wholly unrepentant architect of the massive 2001 foot and mouth culling policy. On Night Waves (Radio 3, Jan 26th 2010) he said, "Without that policy being implemented I think it's quite likely that we might have seen the elimination of half the farm animals in the United Kingdom..." Such coldly arrogant blair-faced nonsense is deeply worrying when it comes from people of power and influence with incandescent belief in the rightness of their actions. As Alex Donaldson told the Inquiry, "The epidemic had been in decline by the time of the introduction of the contiguous cull policy on 29 March.."
Although Sir David admitted yesterday that he'd been guessing about foreign spies, he dismissed his own proposterous claim as a mere "side-issue". With similar insouciance he dismissed the still-reverberating rural trauma of 2001.

February 1st 2010 ~ Legal Smokies?

One emailer, on hearing the news that the FSA was pushing for smokies (see "Dirty Meat" page) to be made legal across the EU or as a UK derogation, wrote that: "They took this step under the pressure of the perpetrators who are already producing smokies in the Meat Hygiene Service Licensed plants..." and the Farmers Guardian article which mentions the name of one 'campaigner', Carmello Gale, does not mention Mr Gale's several dirty meat convictions - which include a 2002 conviction for transporting about 120 unfit sheep carcasses intended for human consumption, and one in 2004 for running an illegal slaughterhouse, killing elderly ewes in unlicensed premises in order to produce "smokies" for ethnic communities. The Farmers Union of Wales has always backed legalising the production of smokies - but it has criticised the use of Mr Gale as a consultant. It seems extraordinary that just a few days before appearing in court on that charge in May 2004, Mr Gale had been at a meeting with DEFRA livestock strategy division civil servants, arranged by the National Sheep Association to discuss the possibility of legalising smokies already being researched by the Food Standards Agency.

February 1st 2010 ~ FSA Board meetings can be seen and heard on the FSA website

The deliberations of the most recent Jan 26 FSA Board meeting are available in full on the FSA webpage. The concern being expressed about the illegal trade in smokies continuing alongside the legal production of smokies, did not seem to be being adequately addressed in the meeting beyond somewhat vague recommendations about "health marks". The power and financial clout of criminals did not seem to be being taken adequately into consideration.
As for the question of funding for the checks and surveillance necessary to ensure compliance with safety, this was to be entirely the responsibility of "the industry".
( Under a new Conservative Government, the Food Standards Agency would be split up. See the Conservative green paper "A Healthier Nation" (pdf) )

January 31st 2010 ~ "I have yet to see a scrap of evidence that we can do anything better than backing off and letting nature heal itself..."

says John Lister-Kaye in the Sunday Telegraph on the subject of the " terrifying insensitivity to nature" betrayed by current government schemes:
"... the notion that the Government may raid our precious green belt is nothing short of treasonable..... I am perpetually angered by pompous politicians who repeatedly refer to "addressing the climate change issue", as though a tweak of the tax regime or a forthcoming White Paper will somehow make it all better. We all know we have the capacity to screw up the natural environment - dear God, we know it - but I have yet to see a scrap of evidence that we can do anything better than backing off and letting nature heal itself."
The whole article may be thought very important by those who, like Mr Lister-Kaye, are aghast to realise that
"our political leaders north and south of the border no longer consider wild nature to be important; that our unsustainable consumer culture and growth economics are more valuable to them, together with satisfying our ever-increasing lust for energy, than the protection of wildlife habitats, or uplifting scenery, or green tourism, or even the spiritual and recreational significance of wildlife green spaces."
His quotation from Henry David Thoreau seems more relevant and urgent than ever before - "in wildness is the preservation of the world" Read in full

30 January 2010 ~Q Fever. Culling in the Netherlands has been put on hold.

In view of the current consulation on the UK's AHS draft strategy and regulation, with its emphasis on killing before testing is done, it is interesting to see that MPs of the Dutch Lower House ( Radio Netherlands article on Jan 28) have forced a temporary halt in the killing of goats in the Netherlands, by suggesting that the culling of untested animals for Q fever is "too drastic" and have suggested that the animals should first be tested individually.
Minister Verburg is against the motion but has agreed to wait for the outcome of next week's parliamentary vote on the issue planned to take place on February 2nd. As the ProMedmoderator says,
"On top of animal welfare aspects of the issue, there are significant zootechnical/economical ones. Male breeding animals are selected according to their genetic potential, their monetary value usually much higher than that of the females and may go into 4-digit figures or even more, in Euros. They may represent many years of breeding efforts and investments."
See also the Q fever page

30 January 2010 ~ DEFRA's Consultation on African Horse Disease

African Horse Sickness is spread by the same culicoides midges that - when infected - have been responsible for Bluetongue. The danger of AHS reaching this country is one that should be taken seriously. The EU Commission has given no indication that it intends to review or update the AHS Directive in the near future - but the UK is consulting on how best to implement the current EU requirements.
In the event of an outbreak, movement restrictions could cut Newmarket and Lambourn off from the rest of the country and bring racing and other horse sport to what Horse and Hound called "a grinding and irreversible halt". There is an urgent need for a thoroughly safe vaccine to be developed and used as soon as possible. Regulations are due to go before parliament next year - and this month Horse and Hound has advised its readers to "Have your say on African Horse Sickness controls". Our own concern is that the UK's mindset, that uninfected animals or animals that can recover should be summarily killed in the name of disease control, is continuing (see paragraph 7.3.6 of the draft strategy) - even when the use of available diagnostic tests ought to be making such draconian plans unnecessary.
( More detail about our own concerns about the Draft Strategy can be seen on the AHS page and see the consultation page on DEFRA's website. See also the Draft Strategy)

28/29 January 2010 ~"We've made vaccines our number one priority at the Gates Foundation because we have seen first hand their incredible impact.." Melinda Gates

The BBC reports on the news that "Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have said they will donate $10bn (£6.2bn) over the next 10 years to develop and deliver new vaccines."

28/29 January 2010 ~ " My starting point today is the simple belief that a vibrant, healthy dairy farming sector is vital to Wales and Britain..."

Yesterday's debate on Dairy Farming was initiated by Stephen Crabb, Conservative MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire:
"...the significant increase in production costs, and a large part of that increase has been driven by the increasing amount of regulation.... a consortium of farming organisations...wrote... The volatile milk price hit healthy heights in 2007-08, but has since collapsed, leaving many farmers once again receiving a price for their milk that is well below their production costs and leaving them unable to plan investment..."
Mr Crabb had some pointed remarks to make about the Food Standards Agency:
" it sees one of its main jobs as warning people away from dairy products... I see from a press release of the past few days that it wants us to abandon full fat milk. Frankly, many of my constituents do not want their taxes to be used to fund that kind of nonsense.."
David Drew said, " I would like to see the industry completely outside Europe, because the CAP has done immense damage."
On the subject of the Ombudsman, Mark Williams said, " If this is to be an ombudsman without teeth, it will be costly lip service and will fail at the first hurdle."
The debate included some discussion on bovine TB - which once again showed the lack of agreement among MPs but Daniel Kawczynski said, "the next Conservative Government must tackle this issue of badgers and I expect to see a limited cull.." The debate lasted from 9.30 am until 11.00 a.m Read in full

28 January 2010 ~ Cost Sharing: "the subject is shrouded in more uncertainty than ever..."

Alistair Driver in his Farmers Guardian blog
"It was during the dark days of foot-and-mouth 2001 that the prospect of passing some of the public cost of animal disease control on to farmers was first raised ... . From the very early days, the emphasis has been on ensuring responsibility and cost sharing are intrinsically linked.... It was a surprise to learn the cost sharing measures would be covered at a later date under a future Treasury Bill. A 12 page Q & A on the Bill made no attempt to explain why.
It is no secret that the Treasury was unimpressed with Defra's botched attempt last summer at cost sharing proposals that included an unworkable compulsory insurance plan, now ditched, and other figures that spectacularly failed to add up.
Has the Treasury now decided that if it wants the job done properly it needs to take ownership itself? ... It appears to be back to square one. Uncertainty still reins." Read in full.
(Cost Sharing page)

January 28 2010 ~ Tracey Worcester will host a debate in the House of Commons this week with farmers and politicians

The Telegraph today:
"......The new code of practice will also create the first ever definition of "free range pork"..... only be used on pigs that have spent their whole life outdoors. Pigs... brought in at some point for fattening can be labelled as "outdoor reared" or "outdoor bred".
The four major supermarkets are expected to sign up to the code due to be published next month to ensure that pork products clearly state which country the meat is from.

27 January 2010 ~ BVA "we are deeply disappointed that Defra remains committed to splitting animal health policy and animal welfare policy"

The British Veterinary Association (BVA) has welcomed aspects of the draft Animal Health Bill but its President, Professor Bill Reilly, says:
"The draft Animal Health Bill is a mixed bag. We are delighted that, on some aspects of the new arrangements, the Government has listened to our concerns and heeded our advice. The proposed UK CVO role based in Defra, as distinct from the new post of England CVO ... has clarified that the UK CVO will report directly to ministers, as well as having a key coordination role in disease outbreak situations, ensuring that the veterinary voice remains at the centre of decision making.
Although the make-up of the proposed Animal Health Organisation (AHO) has not been spelled out, we would expect veterinary expertise to be represented on the board and will continue to push for this.
...Unfortunately, we are deeply disappointed that Defra remains committed to splitting animal health policy and animal welfare policy. Along with many other organisations, the BVA has consistently argued that health and welfare are inextricably linked. We need to be convinced that lines of communication under the new proposals are such that welfare is not sidelined or compromised. We have not yet received those assurances..."
BVA Press release can be read here. Recent posts on Cost Sharing are here.

January 27th 2010 ~"That this House congratulates Tracy Worcester on her film, Pig Business, highlighting the adverse health, animal welfare, environmental and economic impact of industrial pig production..."

It is very cheering to see that Peter Ainsworth's Early Day Motion now has signatures from 76 MPs and will be presented this evening. It "calls on retailers, food manufacturers and food service operators to support British pig farmers by not selling or using imported pigmeat produced to lower animal welfare standards than those that are required in the UK; further calls on the Government to take a lead in persuading the EU to adopt the mandatory labelling of pigmeat as to farming method so that consumers can make informed choices; further calls on public sector bodies to procure only pigmeat that is free range or is produced to standards equivalent to those of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Freedom Food scheme; and further calls on the Government to ensure the proper enforcement of EU legislation on the welfare of pigs and to press other EU governments to do likewise."

January 26th 2010 ~ Conservatives say there is no guarantee they would implement the Government's Responsibility and Cost Sharing plans if they come to power.

The Farmers Guardian reports. See also warmwell's cost sharing page Jim Paice has said the publication of Defra's draft Animal Health Bill is 'premature' and Tim Farron has said the Government's decision to 'pass the buck' on to farmers by making them share the cost of animal disease outbreaks is a 'disgrace'.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph today says that Government plans to reduce the cost of animal disease propose that farms with " low biosecurity" should be paid less "compensation" if their animals are compulsorily killed by government policy. No details are given about the practicalities of such a notion.

January 26th 2010 ~ Grim news from the Netherlands where Q fever has been found on a dairy sheep farm

Dutch policy means that all the pregnant ewes on the infected farm are to be killed. More detail on the Q fever page. The Dutch liberal party (VDD) is going to argue for a parliamentary investigation into the control of Q-fever since it was in 2005 that bacteria were first found in goat farms in the south of the country, 2007 when the disease was first found in humans - but only at the end of 2009 that the government decided to adopt drastic control measures.

January 25/26th 2010 ~ The Dutch contingency plan for FMD now specifies the use of vaccination

Unlike the UK plan, the Dutch contingency plan for FMD now specifies the use of vaccination or marker vaccination in a radius of 2km around a source herd. "Vaccination against Foot-and-Mouth Disease; Differentiating strategies and their epidemiological and economic consequences" is a 160 page report from the Central Veterinary Institute of Wageningen University which examined different control strategies. The conclusion was that:
"A quick and large-scale vaccination within a radius of at least 2km is as effective as preemptive 1-km ring culling to mitigate FMD epidemics. Control measures should primarily target cattle farms. After the epidemic, most seropositive animals are expected on sheep farms and vaccinated cattle farms. An effective end-screening strategy should focus on these farms."
As we say below in connection to the Australian debate, the veterinary and scientific arguments are easily lost when protectionist rules about FMD vaccinated meat and products are taken as set in stone. This is why it is encouraging to read in the Dutch report:
"Market acceptance by the trade partners of products originating from vaccinated animals might cushion the economic effects of an epidemic. An integrated effort of the government and the livestock industry to limit the consequences of an epidemic of FMD to inform the trade partners about the Dutch approach to fight the disease is needed." .
(The report is also here. Thanks to the FMD news service of the University of California, Davis, for the link to this story from VetsWeb.com)

January 25th 2010 ~ FMD "vaccination in the event of an outbreak is becoming the more popular policy..." Australia's Deputy chief executive of Animal Health

Ian Denney, Australia's Deputy chief executive of Animal Health, is quoted today in www.abc.net.au in an article about the symposium on FMD that will take place in Australia in April. Ian Denney recently wrote in an industry article that:
"Vaccination is increasingly seen as an important tool in a possible response, despite the theoretically longer disruption to trade that may occur. The difficulty for Australian policy makers and their veterinary advisers is that there are still a great many unknowns about the FMD virus, the vaccines and how best to utilise them in a response. The important question is how, and under what circumstances exactly, vaccines should be used."
It may be remembered that in November last year Victoria staged a "vaccinating to live" exercise to test the strategy of keeping animals alive that might have previously tested positive as a result of vaccination. "DIVA '09" referred to the DIVA test to distinguish between positive test results found in infected and vaccinated animals developed by Australia's Janine Muller described here as "inexpensive" and not requiring infectious virus to produce the reagents. (Not surprisingly, there are concerns in Australia about bringing in live virus for research - concerns that Ian Denney dismisses: "There's not a push within the livestock research industry to bring a live FMD virus into Australia for scientific purposes," he says.) Victoria's DPI (Department of Primary Industries) chief veterinary officer, Hugh Millar, memorably remarked that "the devastating impact of the FMD outbreak in the UK during 2001 forced a global rethink about how to best deal with the disease".

January 25 2010 ~ An FMD death toll of 11 million animals was the estimate given by the UK's Meat and Livestock Commission after the 2001 outbreak

Dr Hugh Millar, mentioned above, said in November:
"In the UK the outbreak dragged on for 36 weeks at a total economic cost of US$10 billion. In total, more than 5.7 million animals were slaughtered. In contrast, Uruguay, with similar stock numbers, embarked on a mass vaccination program and was able to halt their FMD outbreak in 18 weeks, with less than 7000 animals slaughtered, for an economic loss estimated at US$400 million."
Dr Millar underestimated by nearly 5 million the number in total of animals killed as a result of the UK's policy. (See also our pages on Uruguay 2001 and FMD page) It is encouraging that Australia, at least, is aware of how successfully the Uruguay outbreak was contained. The veterinary and scientific arguments are unanswerable. But, as Ian Denney says above, the problem is " the theoretically longer disruption to trade that may occur". As this website has been saying for nine years, it is this unhelpful and unscientifically-based protectionism that needs to be addressed.

January 25 2010 ~ DEFRA's draft Animal Health Bill presented today

The Bill outlines the principles of the DEFRA's Responsibility and Cost Sharing plans. The Farmers Guardian says:
"This involves the setting up of a new 'arms length' independent body.... The plans are hugely controversial."
The Liberal Democrat Shadow Defra Secretary, Tim Farron is quoted
"The Government's decision to pass the buck is a disgrace. Farmers understand the need to protect public health. But in the current economic climate there can be no justification for shifting the cost to livestock farmers."
See also warmwell pages on cost sharing.

January 25 2010 ~ "cost sharing measures will be introduced under a separate future Finance Bill, not Defra's Draft Animal Health Bill"

The Farmers Guardian says today that the Bill will establish a Chief Veterinary Officer (CVO) for the UK who will be based in Defra but a separate CVO for England will be established alongside those in Wales and Scotland. Hilary Benn is quoted:
"...Those running the new animal health organisation would include people with experience of the livestock industry and specialists in animal and public health, so that those making a living from animals and who are directly affected by diseases can contribute to policies and decisions about animal health."
But Liberal Democrat Shadow Defra Secretary, Tim Farron, whose recent comments about farming have been praised by this website, said it was "grossly unfair" to make livestock farmers share the cost of animal disease, given that the 2007 foot-and-mouth outbreak came from Government-licensed premises.

January 25 2010 ~ Using huge amounts of ever-scarcer money to back a very uncertain horse

"Wind farm subsidies top £1 billion a year"said the Sunday Telegraph yesterday - and at the same time, there are more reports of embarrassments for the climate change lobby that are inevitably casting doubt on the urgency of government measures for renewables. Ed Miliband asserted that the floods in Cockermouth last year could be due to global warming, and last month actually used the now refuted example of Himalayan glaciers, when he warned that the melting glaciers "that feed the great rivers of south Asia could put millions of people at risk of drought." But- as most readers know - last week, the IPCC was forced to retract claims in a much-quoted 2007 IPCC report that Himalayan glaciers would be largely melted by 2035. (See also Geoffrey Lean's column in the Telegraph)
Professor Muir-Wood is head of research at Risk Management Solutions and his study into natural disasters and extreme weather was used by the IPCC as part of evidence suggesting a statistical relationship between global temperature increase and catastrophe losses. However, Professor Muir-Wood is quoted in yesterday's Mail on Sunday:
"...our study included 2004 and 2005 which was when there were some major hurricanes. If you took those years away then the significance of climate change vanished."
Meanwhile, huge subsidies are being paid by consumers and businesses -mainly to fund windpower. Next month's annual report from Ofgem will show that the hidden levy which is part of a Government scheme to force energy companies to fund green energy has risen above £1 billion for the first time. Critics such as Dr John Constable, director of policy and research at the Renewable Energy Foundation, are saying that the subsidy scheme is being used to fund "unrealistic" plans to increase the use of wind power. Last week, the Sunday Telegraph warned that 14 of the UK's officially-designated beauty spots could soon be "blighted by turbines, which can reach more than 400ft in height". (See also windfarm page while Dr Richard North's exposé of the unscientific basis for many IPCC claims can be found here.)

January 23 2010 ~ " we need radical changes within 20 years" Patrick Holden

Well worth reading in full is this article from the Western Morning News by Anthony Gibson. Written on Jan 14th it describes both the Oxford Farming Conference and the Fringe event that took place yards away under the chairmanship of Sir Crispin Tickell, one of Prince Charles' most trusted advisers. Sir Crispin made it very clear that he considers
".. the divide which is emerging between the mainstream and the alternative is neither valid nor helpful...alternative ideas..should be debated at the main conference alongside the more conventional solutions.." Read in full
Colin Tudge, founder of the Campaign for Real Farming, was the first speaker at the Fringe conference:
"Over the last 30 years we have seen the dissolution of British agriculture, so we start from a very low base. .. the reason we have failed miserably is entirely about farming methods. And I don't think it's in the power of those over the road to be able to do anything. It's absolutely wicked if we don't try. Natural polyculture translates into mixed farming, focusing on plants and leaving enough land for livestock. If you farm in that way you finish up with plenty of plants, not much meat, but lots of variety. Farming well will be absolutely compatible with good nutrition and the finest gastronomy. And we could be self reliant on food in this country."
On the subject of GM crops, Professor Martin Wolfe, of the Organic Research Centre, said GM foods could harbour serious problems.
"The more diversity you have the better chance there is for a good, sustainable system. We need to re-integrate agriculture into the natural world."
Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association, said that the threats to food security needed to be reversed with a return to the rotation of crops. He says we need those radical changes within 20 years.

January 23 2010 ~ Global recession and the disastrous decline in cheap energy means that "Business as usual", with intensive methods, GM monoculture and oil based fertilisers can no longer keep food cheap.

Unfortunately, powerful voices such as that of Sean Rickard, (whose contempt for traditional farming methods has so chimed in with New Labour policy that he was chosen to write the agricultural content of the party's election manifesto in 2005) continue to assert, as he did here, that "...there is nothing that can or should be done to save" the UK's small farmers.

January 21 2010 ~ Q fever in the Netherlands: "As usual, the media are playing a bad part in this"

The email just received from our correspondent in the Netherlands continues:
"People have little idea of what is going on, yet they hear about goats and sheep causing people to get really ill, even dying.
And immediately hysteria reigns.
The minister has decided not to issue the measures for small-scale and hobby farms - and then some town, anticipating the nearing council elections campaign, decides to make a good impression by taking these disproportionate measures. Yes, people get sick, yes some very seriously - and some with other already existing health problems die. That's very bad, but most people have no symptoms or mild flu-like symptoms. So the hysteria is over the top. I really hope we are not going to have some kind of witch hunt situation."
(See recent postings on the Q fever page for the present situation in the Netherlands.)

January 21st 2010 ~ World Horse Welfare needs your help to get 47 more MEPs to sign up to help slaughter horses by 6pm today (21 January).

See Horse and Hound
2..The charity's supporters have encouraged 253 MEPs to sign Written Declaration 54/2009 calling for a review of the long distance transportation of horses to slaughter.
But at least half of all MEPs must sign the Written Declaration in order for this issue to be taken forwards, and in order to obtain an extension on the Declaration, need another 47 signatures by the end of the day....Horse Welfare has proof many transporters do not keep the rules on rest periods, food and water and layout of horse boxes..."

The charity asks us urgently to email or call MEPs ( find MEPs here (link to email on each name) asking them to sign the Declaration if they haven't already, or ask them to contact other MEPs about the long distance transportation to slaughter. MEP letter that can be pasted into email. (Sending a letter by email takes only moments once you have the email address and have copied the letter..)

January 21st 2010 ~ Plans to dole out £25.2m of EU money to UK dairy farmers will have no effect on struggling businesses, say experts.

The EU's plan to provide a fund for dairy farmers resulted in a consultation from DEFRA to ask farmers to decide if they want a payment per litre for milk produced between October 2008 and September 2009 or a payment per litre for the first 100,000 litres produced in the same period, with an additional payment over that amount. The payment is on average about £1600 per dairy farmer. Farmers Weekly quotes the managing director of the Promar International
"I can't help but think the money could be better on with a more focused initiative to look at direct action and making things happen. We will be making DEFRA aware that £1600 per farm will pay a bill, but they need to look at the bigger picture to look at what's going on within the whole industry. Of course we would rather that farmers had extra money than none at all, but it could probably be used on something more substantive centrally."
See Farmers Weekly

January 20th 2010 ~ Two imported horses euthanised because of Equine Infectious Anaemia

DEFRA has put down two horses in Wiltshire following the importation from Romania via Belgium of a group of ten horses, two of which have been confirmed with EIA. The premises is currently under restriction and other horses on the premises will now be tested. Chief Veterinary Officer, Nigel Gibbens is quoted:
"This is the first case of equine infectious anaemia infected animals being imported into Great Britain since 1976 and shows the success of our post import testing regime. . .."
Equine Infectious Anaemia is a notifiable disease but not a zoonosis. It is spread by biting insects. The view of British Horse Society Head of Welfare:
:".. Defra have acted incredibly quickly and taken every possible precaution to ensure this outbreak is suppressed. EIA is spread by biting insects rather than horse to horse contact, so the recent weather will have improved the chances of containment. Few biting insects will have survived the cold snap meaning that transmission of the disease to other horses is extremely unlikely."
(Full posting and reader comment)

January 18th 2010 ~ How cost-effective are Government websites?

We wondered in December what DEFRA's website costs now; a question that was quickly answered by Hansard - i.e. that updating and maintaining DEFRA's websites has cost around £340,000 in each of the past two years while, "additional costs in 2009-10 of £71,149 "have been incurred for specialist web design, audience research and web accessibility auditing" (On October 22nd 2009, we reported that DEFRA had spent more than £180,000 overhauling its soil-coloured website, because users complained the colours were "too closely associated with farming".)
Now, the Western Morning News reports that simply updating the scores of governmental websites has cost the country well over 6 million pounds since Gordon Brown became prime minister - although he wants to see cutbacks..
"After unleashing scores of websites early this century, the Government changed policy and demanded the number be scaled back. For example, when Mr Brown became Prime Minister the Department of Health alone had 196 sites. This has been cut to 71 and officials have until July next year to cut this to two sites..." Read in full
More money is apparently now going to be spent by the Central Office of Information in studying "whether Government websites provide value for money". (Warmwell.com costs readers nothing - its only financial outlay being the cheapest webhosting we could find.)

January 18 2010 ~ Letters to the Sunday Telegraph: " the decimation of the family farming industry".

Extracts from four letters: "Some land is now better described as a tip than farmland."
...have found that there is a much better living to be made in waste disposal on land that should be in use for food production.
Defra supports this because Brussels no longer allows much of this waste in landfill. So they call it "reclaiming" and maintain that it is valuable fertiliser....contractors (they actually have to continue to be called "farmers", lest they fall foul of planning laws) are now acquiring land with the express purpose of engaging in the practice. There is little evidence locally of any improvement to crops and some to the contrary..."
The demise of 7,300 dairy farmers in Britain can be laid at the door of the EU.
"When I was farming in the 1970s we had an efficient Milk Marketing Board, which gave fair prices for milk to farmers for many decades, but, by diktat from Brussels, it was disbanded....."
"..crazy that state procurement is not used to support British farmers."
"Hilary Benn says that buying locally supports British farming. It is a pity, however, that government bodies making procurement decisions are not allowed to specify that they want to buy British produce..."
"why are we building more and more houses on our best farming land?"
"With our increasing dependence on imported food, which is becoming less available due to increased demand from developing countries, why are we building more and more houses on our best farming land?"
Read letters in full

Friday January 15th 2010 ~ Mad scientist syndrome is rampant.

Once again we are grateful for the light touch and substantial grasp of Sir Simon Jenkins. Writing yesterday in the Guardian of recent scares and pseudo threats:
"....Had these scares been disseminated by a private firm, a local authority or a newspaper (as was anti-MMR), they would be damned from on high with demands that heads roll. As it is, the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies sails gaily on, still graced by the presence of Sir Roy Anderson, who happens also to draw a six-figure salary as a non-executive director of GlaxoSmithKline, which made hundreds of millions from the government's panic. Anderson, and GSK, vigorously deny any conflict of interest."
As always, well worth reading in full. (More on Professor Anderson whose rises and falls we have watched with wonderment.)

Friday January 15th 2010 ~ Mr Fitzpatrick's answer on beak trimming gave an over-simplified version of FAWC's advice

Jim Fitzpatrick said yesterday in reply to Norman Baker (Hansard) that the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) had advised that a complete ban on beak trimming of laying hens should not be introduced next January but
"should be deferred until it can be demonstrated reliably under commercial conditions that laying hens can be managed without beak trimming...a balance has to be struck between reducing the number of procedures carried out and ensuring that the birds do not suffer worse welfare insults, such as feather pecking and cannibalism."
FAWC's advice was much more complex. In particular it mentioned Switzerland "..where both cages and beak trimming have been banned since 1992, suggest that, with experience, the need to beak trim can be avoided." and, even more decidedly, " ...it would be difficult to argue that either conventional hot blade or cold-cut trimming, or infrared treatment techniques, constitute anything other than a mutilation either from the initial insult to the beak, or the end result."
The problem of cannibalism is caused by the continuing use of crowded cages and the stress involved in intensive conditions. As CIWF says, "...if as Defra intends, the ban is repealed without a new commencement date being set, we are unlikely to ever see this painful mutilation being brought to an end".

Friday January 15th 2010 ~ Germany's Minister of Agriculture, Ilse Aigner, is insisting that no emissions reduction targets should be set for the German agriculture sector.

Der Spiegel interviewed her. She said:
"Proper nutrition cannot be achieved at zero cost ....German agriculture accounts for around 6 percent of German emissions - excluding the transportation of agricultural goods. There are good reasons why there are no emissions reduction targets for this sector....politicians and farmers are all well aware that agricultural practices must become more efficient and more environmentally friendly. But please, let's not go too far with this....'
Read in full (English version)

January 14 2010 ~ "EU legislation, which will restrict the amount of energy that can be sourced from coal, will increase Britain's reliance on gas."

David Hunter, an analyst at the energy consultancy McKinnon & Clark, is quoted in the Independent:
"..we are in a situation at present where we export cheap gas to continental Europe to be stored during the summer, and then buy it back later at more expensive prices. The fact is that we have nowhere to store what we have extracted."
The newspaper mentioned the Opposition-sponsored debate on Fuel Inefficiency on Thursday.
Hansard reports that Greg Clark had asked Ed Miliband: "... Is he aware that if we had had just half of France's storage capacity, British consumers could be paying £1 billion less for their gas this winter? What is his policy on how much gas storage is needed?"
Ed Miliband said that Mr Clark "is going around saying that gas storage is a big problem for the UK and citing figures, but National Grid is quoted in the papers this morning as saying that his figures are meaningless, because they ignore the role of the North sea, which provides 50 per cent. of our gas storage, and the role of UK import capacity.." He added that "Playing politics with energy security and gas storage, and alarming people, is the wrong thing to do."

January 14th 2010 ~ "our dismal record on renewables"

In the exchange on Tidal Energy, (Hansard) Dr. John Pugh (Lib Dem) remarked,
"given that something as modest as Peel Holdings' proposal for a tidal lagoon in the Mersey would generate 650 GW of energy a year - much more than wind farms - is it not time the Government got solidly behind such schemes, given our dismal record on renewables? We have had plenty of studies. We now need some action."
Sir Patrick Cormack quoted "Sustainable Energy-without the hot air" by Professor David MacKay:
"if we covered the windiest 10 per cent. of the country with windmills...we would be able to generate...half of the power used by driving an average fossil-fuel car 50 kilometres per day."?
Ed Miliband said that he had read "parts" of the book.

January 13 2010 ~ Government is to set up a supermarket ombudsman

Farmers Guardian "The Government is to set to announce its intention to set up a supermarket Ombudsman later today (Wednesday, January 13).
"Consumer Minister Kevin Brennan announced today that he has accepted the Competition Commission's recommendation for a body to enforce the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP). The Code of Practice comes into force on 4 February 2010. This will be quickly followed by a consultation on how best to enforce it, including who that body might be and the powers it could have." Read more
This is, of course, very good news - but Caroline Lucas' concerns (ombudsman page) are very relevant,
UPDATE On the news of yet another consultation, Andrew George today said of Kevin Brennan's announcement:
"This is welcome, as far as it goes. However, Government ought to implement the Competition Commission's recommendation without delay. The Competition Commission referred this matter to the Business Secretary over 5 months ago.
We've had 10 years of inquiries and reviews. Surely we don't need another one.."
More comment on ombudsman page

January 12 2010 ~ "how consistently these scares follow an identifiable pattern..."

Christopher Booker today reminds Daily Mail readers that scares such as sars, avian flu, BSE in beef, the millennium bug and, most recently, the panic over so-called "swine flu"
"invariably begin with some misreading of the scientific evidence, which then gets picked up and inflated into some major threat to human health or well being.
... politicians and governments get involved, buying the exaggerated threat wholesale and responding with a deluge of measures which end up costing us all billions of pounds."
He might have added that in some cases, the toll in animal lives has been huge too. BSE cost us all an estimated £7billion because it was suggested, not least by the government's chief scientist in 1996, John Pattison, that the human death toll from vCJD "caught by eating beef" could reach 500,000 within a few years. There was no outcry when this figure was quietly revised downwards to just '100'.
The major point made in today's article is that
"..too many people have a vested interest in talking up these panics..scientists who are dependent on promoting scares for their funding; politicians who recklessly use scares to show their concern for our welfare; and, not least, those commercial interests which make fortunes out of scares."
Hardly surprisingly, he concludes with what he, and many others now, consider the catastrophically expensive panic over so-called AGW - (and on that subject of global warming and 'following the money', the investigative journalism of the EU referendum blog with its many links is consistently readable and impressive.)

January 12 2010 ~ Georgina Downs will take her pesticide case to Europe

What now has to be called Britain's "Supreme Court" refused to allow her to appeal (see below) and this has left her with no option but to take her evidence to the European Courts, she said. The Farmers Guardian reports on the story. Our own background to her long fight against the human health risks caused by pesticides is here.

January 11th 2010 ~ Clear enough leadership? Adequately articulated?

The cross-party EFRA Committee will question Hilary Benn on Wednesday in an oral evidence session about whether the Food2030 strategy adequately answers the points raised by their own report on food security published in 2009, "Securing food supplies up to 2050: the challenges faced by the UK".
In Section 3 of that report, DEFRA'S VISION FOR FOOD, the EFRA committee commented:
" ....Defra must recognise that calling for more domestic food production is one thing, but it cannot order that this be done. It must, however, lay out clearly what role it has in helping the UK food and farming industries to achieve this objective.... it must supply clear direction and indicate what further work is needed and the deadline for its completion. Cross-party consensus on the vision and strategy is essential....
We are encouraged by the signs that Defra has begun to recognise the importance of UK production, as well as trade, in securing food supplies. It is essential that it develops and articulates this vision. Clear leadership from Defra is crucial to the security of the UK's food supplies..."
Whether on Wednesday the committee will feel that the strategy 2030 gives genuinely clear leadership and adequately "articulates this vision" remains to be seen.

January 11th 2010 ~ "What farmer who relies on supermarkets will risk speaking out when they are likely to be delisted?" asks Caroline Lucas

"while we welcome the Tories' late recognition that something must be done about destructive supermarket practices, we need details on how the proposed ombudsman would work and what powers it would have..." The Green MEP for South-East England, says there is little sign that the proposed regulatory body would have any real power to challenge the big business practices that dominate food retail. It's high time we had a supermarket ombudsman, she says, but such a position must be both proactive and powerful. See updated Ombudsman page.

January 11th 2010 ~ NBA wants to sweep away "current, outdated, systems" in favour of direct grant funding for farmers

The NBA press release today says it has called for: ".. a radical new approach to CAP reform, with its massive amount of red tape and the absorption of a huge proportion of available funds by self-interested executive agencies and quangos completely eliminated." The NBA wants
"an EU-wide approach to sweeping reform, with current, outdated, systems replaced by direct grant funding for farmers to make their businesses more proficient at producing food ...Easily available, direct investment funding for farmers must replace the inefficient and costly government executive agencies such as the RPA (Rural Payments Agency) and the RDA (Rural Development Agency), which are currently charged with administering Rural Development Programme funds but which have failed miserably with the delivery"
It would like to see the "demolition of the existing funding control system" adding that ".. the amount of money wasted by almost useless agencies is scandalous while the "current system of distributing important sections of CAP funding is horrendously dysfunctional and achieves virtually nothing..." Read in full

Monday January 11th 2010 ~ "Ebay: Will exchange 60 million unwanted doses of swine flu vaccine for large pile of grit.."

Not actually on Ebay yet - but this is the suggestion of an emailer who quotes today's Times "Can we really trust chief scientific officers?
"...nowadays it is outwardly sober government scientists who spin the biggest scares. They know they can get away with it because laymen have an irrational respect for words uttered by scientists.... It will be a good 50 years before anyone can make a definitive judgment on the biggest scientific scare of our times: climate change. But I can't read the latest prediction for man-made flood and tempest without thinking of all those millions who have failed to die from swine flu and the other grim fates predicted by government scientists."
Wolfgang Wodarg, head of health at the Council of Europe, has proposed a resolution calling for an investigation into the role of drug firms in the H1N1 scare The Mail today says, "Dr Wodarg's claims come as it emerged the British government is desperately trying to offload up to £1billion of swine flu vaccine, ordered at the height of the scare." (As for that most egregious of former chief scientific advisors, Sir David King, the legacy of his tenure was summed up in blog post Seven Pillars of Piffle)

Monday January 11th 2010 ~ "we won't get the crisis measures we need for our food system until the crisis has already hit.." Telegraph

Telegraph "We can no longer take our food supply for granted," writes Bee Wilson, the Guild of Food Writers' food journalist of the year.
"For years, academics such as Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University, gave warning that we were "sleepwalking" into a future where our food security was likely to be seriously undermined..... For years, the Government told us everything was fine."
She is writing about Food 2030 calling it a long overdue acknowledgment of farming and that "unlike Gordon Brown, food is something we can't do without."
The problem, she says, is that there are few signs of any serious steps to make the necessary renaissance in British farming come about. Sharing our distaste for DEFRAspeak, she notes that: "..The report blethers about such things as the "milk roadmap" and the "fruit and vegetable task force" but can find no "serious new injection of either money or laws to aid farmers". She is fair enough to add
"It is all too easy to attack the "2030" report for its typical Brownian mix of hypocrisy and impotence."
but wonders, as do so many of us, about the alternative. She notes that in spite of apparent support for the grocery ombudsman and honest labelling, David Cameron "has stopped short of spelling out what the "sustainable farming" he favours might really entail." She concludes by quoting Colin Tudge's view that our politicians are "dangerously deluded" about farming...." Read article in full. At least the Lib Dem's Tim Farron shows a grasp of rural affairs, taking a sour look at DEFRA, at animal health policy and at the countless consultations - adding: "It's crazy that farmers are being dictated to by bureaucrats, especially when they're the ones who are left to pick up the pieces from the government's mistakes. If we want British farming to continue to be the best and most entrepreneurial in the world, then we must put farmers at the heart of policy decision making.". (see FWi)

January 10 2010 ~ " We just assume everything will be on the supermarket shelves..."

The continuing brutal weather means crops cannot be gathered and deliveries are under threatSky News quotes Stephen Alambritis, of the Federation of Small Businesses:
"There is concern that farmers have not been able to bring the harvest in for such items as potatoes, sprouts and cabbages which reduces the amount available to stores - and pushes up prices."
The weather is forcing some dairy farmers to throw fresh milk away because tankers can't get through, As Sky News acknowledges a "snow day" under the duvet at home is not an option for the farming community and quotes a Northern Ireland farmer, Wallace Gregg:
"I think sometimes we forget just how powerful mother nature can be. We just assume everything will be on the supermarket shelves and that it will just be there but it's made on farms and we have to remember that."

January 10 2010 ~ Et tu, Observer? "The government's new green initiatives are unlikely to come online fast enough to plug our growing energy gap"

An emailer remarks today that
"The Observer, along with its sister paper,The Guardian, has promoted wind power relentlessly for two decades. Can it really be possible that they are at last beginning to see the light - or more likely,the lights go off - if we continue to invest in wind power?"
The Observer today quotes Andrew Bainbridge of the Major Energy Users' Council.
"The whole situation is very, very difficult and we have got to stop pretending we have got anything other than chaos."
As the paper says, given that many older nuclear and coal-fired electricity plants will be scrapped over the next few years: "even if the £100bn wind-power revolution hailed by Brown and his colleagues is a stunning success, it will do nothing to alleviate a formidable short-term squeeze." Read Observer article (See also Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times. Also warmwell.com's pages on oil, wind power and other energy concerns.)

Jan 10 2010 ~ Energy supplies: "It's like watching a slow motion train wreck. It might happen this year, it might happen next year, but gas is a depleting resource and there will be a crisis at some stage"

Roland Wessel, chief executive of StarEnergy, the UK's second largest onshore oil producer, is quoted here. He says no one foresaw the rapid decline in reserves that will see the UK shift to being an importer of 50 per cent of its gas this year and 80 per cent by 2018.
Unlike Mr Brown, Mr Wessel is seriously afraid that the UK will face a gas supply shortfall if it doesn't increase its storage capacity. StarEnergy has been developing onshore storage since 2000, but has been able to complete only one project owing to the time needed to navigate the tortuous planning consent procedures.
As for the government's claim that a £100 billion green revolution is underway, Christopher Booker's column in the Sunday Telegraph calls this pure "fantasy" and reminds readers that "a new study last week predicted (that electricity bills) will quadruple during this decade to an average of £5,000 a year. This would drive well over half the households in Britain into "fuel poverty".... the cost of the Climate Change Act alone has been estimated by our Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband at £18 billion every year until 2050 - a law that only three MPs in this Rotten Parliament dared oppose." (See also energy page and windfarms page)

January 10th 2010 ~ Hilary Benn denies that Defra "advises the public not to buy local produce".

His letter to the Telegraph today:
"...Indeed, just before Christmas, Defra organised a special event at New Covent Garden Market to promote some of the great locally produced food from around the country. The latest food to get name protection under the EU scheme is the Cornish sardine. Locally produced food bought in season has a smaller environmental footprint. I support it being promoted as much as possible. Buying local produce supports British farming."
However, the EU's thoughtful protectiveness towards the Cornish sardine and Hilary Benn's support for buying "seasonal" local produce notwithstanding, it cannot be denied that DEFRA's Food 2030 (pdf) clearly states on page 47
".. emissions from transporting food will be offset by lower production emissions compared to a local alternative."
and
".. If they (i.e.local producers) do have alternative markets the economic benefits of buying local products are small. Conversely, choosing local produce over imports can reduce the prosperity of communities in developing countries that do not have alternative high value markets for their products."
The added clause ".. that do not have alternative high value markets for their products" is hardly enough to make irrelevant the worry expressed by this letter from 12 Development Agencies sent to the Groceries Market Inquiry about how UK grocery retailers "continue to engage in irresponsible buying practices with overseas suppliers, which include violations of the Supermarket Code" (read in full)
There is much of enormous value in the document Food 2030 but our concerns remain.

January 10th 2010 ~ "Farmers must be allowed to concentrate on producing food There is more to farming than 'enhancing' the environment."

Letters in the Sunday Telegraph Extract:
"... As beef and sheep producers on a remote hill farm we are being forced by Natural England to reduce livestock numbers in a misguided attempt to "enhance" the environment...If, as suggested by the report, Food 2030, food becomes scarce, it will be almost impossible to restock the uplands with "hefted" livestock ..It is extraordinary that the DEFRA has allowed Natural England to play such an important role in the introduction of Upland Entry Level Stewardship, which will "reward hill farmers and land managers for delivering environmental and landscape benefits". There is no role for food production and farming in the remit."
Another letter
".... We are in a protectionist customs union, subject to onerous regulations that are ruining our farmers and fishermen and causing stagnation in our manufacturing industry. It will not get better until it dawns on politicians that we would be far better off out."

January 9th 2010 ~ Farmers' heroic efforts to help neighbours interrupted by nit-picking bureaucracy

Following the report about the much needed relaxation this weekend of delivery drivers hours, we have received this cri-de-coeur from Lesley (whose latest blog entry at Devon Fine Fibres gives further details)
".. What about the rules regarding the use of red farm diesel for non farm business related activities? We and our neighbours are doing heroic stuff here in Devon to get neighbours free from snow bound drives, take doctors to unwell local residents and deliver food, not to mention of course all our own extra work.
My husband struggled out to his tractor and machinery business yesterday to be faced, would you believe, with an inpromptu Trading Standards Health and Safety Inspection.
This was while all my husband's engineers were in and out of the workshop and struggling to local farms frantically trying to help with breakdowns to keep farmers moving. The yard and workshops were also badly affected and staff were unfreezing the water pipes under the concrete yard and dealing with a burst boiler.
The TS officer took my husband away from all this and picked up over the 90 minute visit on a broken rung on a ladder and a disused toaster in the rest room which had not been properly disposed of!! He also confirmed that using red diesel for non farm business related activities would result in a £5000 fine if caught and advised farmers against it! "
Like us, Lesley can hardly believe the fatuousness of media coverage of the crisis. Unacknowledged by the soft-faced announcers and politicians, Britain's farmers are doing a great deal to keep life going; food, transport, deliveries, help, friendliness..

January 8th 2010 ~ "Restrictions on working time rules for lorry drivers have been relaxed in a bid to help get animal feed to snow-hit farms"

The Department of Transport has allowed a temporary relaxation. See Farmers Weekly. Meanwhile, the misery from the extreme cold for livestock continues. The National Beef Association has appealed directly on behalf of Scottish farmers to cabinet secretary, Richard Lochhead, hoping he will secure the release of some of the Scottish Government's adversity funds to cover extreme snow damage. As Kim Haywood explains:
"Snowfall has been so heavy that the roofs on a number of cattle sheds have caved in. Mr Lochhead is aware of the urgent nature of the situation created on many farms and the very real dangers faced by stock that is suddenly without shelter"
As for wildlife, the Telegraph describes "garden birds dying, ancient trees under threat and grit salt upsetting ecosystems in water courses." Farmers are being asked to put out grains and seeds for rare farm birds.

January 8th 2010 ~ An end within 5 years - on organic farms at least - to the miserable practice of killing male calves just after birth

The Soil Association page quotes the director of farmer and grower relations, Phil Stocker,
"Most of our members agree that culling and disposing of young calves is wasteful and a symptom of an unsustainable farming system. ..There are good alternatives to ensure male dairy calves become a useful resource while giving them quality of life. Many farmers are evolving their breeding strategies towards more dual purpose strains, giving greater levels of robustness while avoiding poor conformation male calves. Others are working to grow the UK organic rose veal market, as well as collaborating to rear calves more cost effectively."
Read in full

January 8th 2010 ~ Even at full capacity the UK's storage facilities can only hold up to 16 days worth of gas

The Yorkshire Post:
"...With France boasting a maximum storage capacity of 91 days and Germany up to 73 days, the pressure to improve Britain's gas supplies will likely continue long after the present frost has begun to thaw... dependency on Continental imports is fuelling calls for the doubling of the UK's own storage facilities."
Ian Parrett, of energy analysts Inenco, is quoted:
"the problem at the moment is that while there are plans for more storage, the money hasn't been forthcoming. It would cost in the region of £500 million to build a facility, which doesn't seem a lot when you compare it to the amount used to bail out the banks." Read article

January 8th 2010 ~ Energy Security. The Department of Energy and Climate Change is angry at "scaremongering"...

Not noted for a capacity for irony, those at the Dept of Energy and Climate Change are, according to yesterday's Guardian, dismissive of suggestions that poor planning has left Britain heading towards an energy crisis. Meanwhile the Times today announces that nine giant new wind farms - 6,000 turbines - are to be built in the seas around Britain - but less than 10 per cent of the £1.7 billion investment will be spent in Britain. The article says, "The nine farms announced will generate enough electricity to power more than half of Britain's homes, but only when the wind blows..." (More detail on the Wind farm page) In Tuesday's Yorkshire Post, Bernard Ingham was deadly serious when he said that without secure supplies of energy - and especially electricity - neither Yorkshire nor the UK can function as a civilised society. The Department of Energy and Climate Change should be eliminated and
"the Environment Department can worry about climate change. We need a Department of Energy full stop."

January 8th 2010 ~ Artificial nanoparticles - "very significant gaps in our knowledge": Lord Krebs

Nanoparticles are materials at the atomic/molecular level, generally with structures of less than 100 nm in size. The concern about their use in food is that although if one changes the size of materials it may result in useful properties, no one can yet be sure how size will affect other properties such as potential toxicity. Last February, the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee launched an inquiry into the use of nanotechnology in food products and the food industry. Today, both the Telegraph and the BBC report that the Committee's Report, Nanotechnologies and Food recommends that an official register be set up by the Food Standards Agency to keep a check on research into the controversial additives. And there is concern about the secrecy of the industry in conducting research. The evidence given in Part Two of the report is interesting - particularly since it shows how no-one yet has any real understanding of engineered nanoparticles nor of the significance of the fact that such materials will end up in the environment, just as antibiotics, analgesics and even cancer chemotherapy agents can be detected in British rivers.

January 7/8 2010 ~ "this time our prime objective must be feeding people, not making profits for large business corporations as now"

Professor John Beddington, like his predecessor, David King, appears to think GM and nanotechnology will provide a new, "green" revolution. The Telegraph reported today on the government's Chief Scientist speech at this year's Oxford Farming Conference and quoted Caroline Boin, Environment Programme Director at International Policy Network, who asserted grimly that the public "will have to accept GM eventually"
However, Colin Tudge at the rival "Oxford Real Farming Conference" gave a very different view:
"...Britain has been robbed of the skills it needs...Finally the Government has recognised that we're now in trouble and are desperately pinning their hopes on untried GM technology to save us. But scientists who truly understand agriculture know that..the real answer is to redesign agriculture from first principles. But this time our prime objective must be feeding people, not making profits for large business corporations as now."
See also the Farmers Guardian

January 7th 2010 ~ Farmers' help has been invaluable in the crisis

Livestock is suffering in the freezing conditions and animals have had to be rescued from drifts. Feed is difficult to deliver. Nevertheless, in stranded villages, farmers have been delivering milk, have rescued stranded motorists in 4x4 farm vehicles and kept roads clear with salt and grit. Hilary Benn's words today suggest he still sees the main point of farmers is to be "custodians of our countryside" but at least he added that
".. farmers have shown over the last few days that they are also an extra emergency service. They deserve a lot of thanks for helping their communities...." (Farmers Guardian)
The Twitterer "cyberdoyle" says "Farmers in the north have been digging out roads and clearing tracks for old people since 19th December!...We haven't seen a gritter since it started, but the main roads have been kept clear."
While ludicrous leadership squabbles and Jonathan Ross' salary provide such irritating grist for the media mill, one wonders if the survival lessons of the big chill are really getting through. In a sudden crisis without transport, power and without access to supermarkets, frozen Britain is perhaps getting a taste of what the future might hold - those who can't seem to see beyond their political survival in the next general election are proving to be rather worse than useless.

January 7th 2010 ~ "concentrations of insecticide in clouds above seeding machines 1,000 times the dose lethal to bees"

A Yale university article reports that low-level exposure to pesticides could be contributing to epidemics and die-off among amphibians, bees and bats. The bee page has been updated.

January 6th 2010 ~ "Mr Benn expects the revival of farming to be carried on the backs of consumers"

Clive Aslet in the Telegraph: "At last a minister says it: we need to grow more food" today, says that yesterday's speech
"was met with some cynicism, given that it was only four years ago that the Treasury produced a document damning farming as an old-fashioned, high-risk activity."
and, says Clive Aslet, "even if a golden age is around the corner, it is not yet evident on the ground." Considering the ageing nature of Britain's farmers whose children are not attracted to farming in its present over-regulated and underpaid form, he concludes his article by thanking heaven for the "hard-working Poles and Lithuanians" who are still prepared to keep farming going.
It's now a year ago that Hilary Benn's speech at the 2009 Oxford farming conference included the resonant phrase, " I want British agriculture to produce as much food as possible. No ifs. No buts." At the time, Professor Tim Lang commented that although Hilary Benn's 2009 speech was to be welcomed,
"it was merely a speech; it was not co-ordinated policy driven by Defra to encourage the big corporate powerhouses, the supermarkets, the buyers to take the long-term investment to encourage farmers and growers to plan"
This year, and in spite of all the reservations many of us feel about 2030 speech yesterday, Clive Aslet is not alone in thinking that "there does seem to be a genuine sea-change at work here."

January 6th 2010 ~ "...the fragility of the current UK food system, which depends heavily on imports, last-minute ordering, and long distribution chains..."

The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence today looks at DEFRA's 20-year food and farming strategy, and although the article mirrors our own concerns, it balances this by saying that the strategy ".. represents a considerable shift from Defra's position even recently." Extract:
"....The Cabinet Office's report Food Matters [http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/work_areas/food_policy.aspx Food Matters, published in 2008 highlighted the vital connection between food and health as well as environment, and flagged up food security as a pressing issue...
However, there are omissions and fudges. .. makes no attempt to address the concentrated power structures that determine global food production and thereby the nature of what we eat.
The Conservatives have managed to steal a march on Labour here, pledging to introduce the supermarket ombudsman..
.. The rhetoric remains that of "consumer choice" when many, even in the industry, now believe that consumers will have to get used to less choice. ..
Development charities will be irritated too by the emphasis on further liberalisation of agricultural markets globally, which they argue often damages food security in developing countries. ....
The report sets the goal of getting the public to accept new food science but without spelling out role of GM, which the chief scientist, Sir John Beddington, is instead expected to address in a speech tomorrow at the Oxford Farming Conference."
Read Guardian article in full Its tone is very different from that of Robin Page in the Daily Mail. He points out with angry frustration that in 1985 there were 28,000 dairy farmers in England and Wales - by November 2009 there were only 11,551, a number reducing by 9 a week. Britain now imports 1.5 million litres of milk a day - "despite the fact," says Robin Pge, "that we are blessed with one of the most temperate climates in the world and our most successful crop is grass."

January 6th 2010 ~ "it is the livestock sector that is still battling with official indifference."

EDP24's Michael Pollitt today pulls few punches on DEFRA's record, mentioning in particular Margaret Beckett who "didn't bother to mask her dislike of farming" - althoughHilary Benn's "belated recognition of farming's importance has been welcomed". He considers that it is hardly surprising that Mr Benn's "latest adoption of the food mantle is regarded with some cynicism".
"... The refusal to tackle the bovine TB nightmare is costing the taxpayer almost £100m a year and causing untold misery for farmers across the western half of the country. And the past decade has seen almost half the pig sector disappear, notes former Norfolk producer, Philip Richardson, of Downham, near Wymondham. He expressed the concern of many farmers about the impact of ever-greater bureaucratic inspections and regulation, especially on the rapidly-increasing outdoor pig sector.
It is the seemingly inflexible, often intolerant approach taken by officials on inspection visits that irritates so many potential conservation enthusiasts.
Chris Allhusen, Norfolk county chairman of the Country Land and Business Association, who is based at East Bradenham, has first-hand experience.
"We've had nearly every inspection possible; they get very excited when they find a six-metre margin which is 5.5m wide but ignore one that is seven metres wide. Sometimes the treatment we get is a little annoying," he said.
And, when Europe announced plans to scrap set-aside, Mr Benn's department was determined to force farmers in England, alone in the EU, to have to take land out of production. It took a battle-royal to persuade Defra to adopt a more flexible approach, thanks again to Peter Kendall. "
Read in full

Ombudsman: "Now the pressure is on Lord Mandelson to respond to the Competition Commission's recommendation"

UPDATE A press release from Andrew George today: (Extract)
".....I am encouraged that the Conservatives are making encouraging movements...Although they are not signing up fully to the Competition Commission's recommended remedy, it is at least a movement in the right direction.
Earlier support would have been helpful, but I am grateful none the less. Now the pressure is on Lord Mandelson..." Read in full
(Ombudsman page)

January 5 2010 ~ Nick Herbert says a Conservative Government's Ombudsman would be a dedicated unit in the Office of Fair Trading rather than an independent body.

The Ombudsman would be funded by a levy paid by retailers and a new Tory government would ensure the focus is on smaller producers. The OFT is thought ideally suited to take on the role - which would not cost taxpayers anything. Read in full in the Farmers Guardian. (More on the need for a groceries ombudsman here)

January 5 2010 ~ Nick Herbert's statement says we are entering a new age of farming.

Extract:
"...It's not enough to talk loosely about a fair market or the need for better labelling. We need action...It's meaningless to talk about a competitive agricultural industry while increasing the regulatory burden on farmers and failing to take the necessary action to deal with Bovine TB ... If we want to ensure food security in 2030 and beyond, we need to begin by valuing the agricultural industry that will deliver it."
He said that the last ten years have been characterised by the creation of DEFRA whose name "didn't even mention farming or agriculture'.

January 5 2010 ~ Defra Launches Government's Food Strategy 2030

At the Oxford Farming Conference today Hilary Benn unveiled the Government's food strategy, Food 2030. The 24 page pdf summary is here (worthy phrases and colourful photos) while the full report is here (2.9 Mb)
As we report below, there are aspects we do find worrying.
The news that
"the Food Standards Agency is taking forward a programme of consumer engagement which will provide an opportunity to discuss with consumers their understanding of GM, their understanding of the benefits, and their concerns"
reminds us of the traditionally pro-GM stance of the FSA and their recent controversial "report" on organic food, soon refuted by French scientists. Then the claim that
"choosing local produce over imports can reduce the prosperity of communities in developing countries"
- which implies the very questionable assertion that imports actually increase prosperity of small farmers in developing countries. (see below and this letter from NGOs) The report makes much of its claim that
"Livestock production is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions globally"
without pointing out , as did the recent Times article, that although the prodigious methane output of cattle may be bad for the environment, grazing on grass will soak up carbon.

January 5 2010 ~"... a PR exercise more concerned with quangoid prestige"

A very readable - and worrying - Times article yesterday by Libby Purves on the attempt by Natural England
"to lead a high- profile 'flagship species' project that will highlight the organisation at the forefront of a major biodiversity delivery initiative"
- as a leaked internal email proclaims, in the sort of language we have come to dread. They want to reintroduce the white-tailed sea eagle to Suffolk. As the article explains, the major problem would be the exclusion zones that may be declared around any nest, so that in a radius of 100m or more nobody would be allowed to drive a tractor and trailer or maintain a fence:"... Basically, if a sea eagle moves in on you, it is like having Tony Blair with his protection and surveillance team buy the house next door...." Libby Purves calls the plan
"a greater white-tailed gimmick. Expensive, vainglorious and typical of a growing trend in the "conservation" industry. Many of the bodies that claim that title are not preserving at all: they are fiddling, initiating, interfering..."
Read in full

January 4 2010 ~ grazing cows save the planet

The Farmers Guardian cites the Times article that notes that although the prodigious methane output of cattle may be bad for the environment, grazing on grass will soak up carbon.
As we wrote in November, "grazing cattle and sheep are the unsung heroes of the British countryside". Last year the NBA endorsed Alan Titchmarsh's remark: "Even if it were possible to plough our grasslands and moorlands and grow vegan food, the carbon release would be far greater than centuries of the exhalations of cattle and sheep."

January 4 2010 ~ The Soil Association welcomes the Government's "excellent suggestion that publicly owned land should be converted to growing spaces".

In its preliminary response to tomorrow's Food 2030 report, the Soil Association says that its own Food for Life Partnership (FFLP) is already leading the way by encouraging schools to grow their own food. FFLP gives communities access to seasonal, local and organic food, and to the skills they need to cook and grow fresh food for themselves. This also encourages people to make the link between their food choices and the impact on their health and that of the planet. Read in full

January 4 2010 ~ "the report will urge consumers not to insist on buying locally-produced food, because doing so would reduce the prosperity of farmers in developing countries."

DEFRA's forthcoming food strategy paper will - extraordinarily - dismiss the Professor Tim Lang's concept of "food miles" - reported the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. It also ignores what NGOs have been saying; i.e. how very far from increasing the prosperity of farmers in developing countries buying practices with overseas suppliers still are.
In the Competition Commission Inquiry into the Groceries Market - in the section entitled '3rd Party Submissions from NGOs and Charitable Organisations', evidence given in this letter from 12 NGOs shows that workers in exporting countries are getting a wage - but a very poor one. The letter speaks of
"detrimental impacts of such buying practices on farmers, farm workers and suppliers in developing countries, as well as on levels of poverty more generally, are well documented. They include lower pay, longer hours, poor health and safety conditions and increased use of temporary contracts for workers, as well as increased vulnerability and barriers to entry for small producers."
A separate matter is the increasingly fragile nature of these long distance supply lines. As we reported in 2008, when the prices of oil and commodities shot up, the shutters came down in some of the exporting countries in the developing world. On the whole, in this sort of crisis, governments prefer to feed their populations rather than have food riots.

January 4th 2010 ~ DEFRA report will tell us to accept GM

The Sunday Telegraph says that DEFRA's comprehensive food strategy for the next 20 years, to be unveiled this week, will tell the public that it "must accept genetically-modified food." Again, this ignores what many experts are saying.
Last July, the Sustainable Development Commission's recommendations to Government Food Security and Sustainability: The perfect fit (pdf), led by Professor Tim Lang, said of GM that some people regard
" .. technologies such as genetic modification and a new era of hi-tech industrialised farming as the way forward, dismissing more sustainable lower-input agriculture as irrelevant.
But the systematic International Assessment of Agricultural Science, Technology and Development knowledge, co-initiated and led by the current Chief Scientist at Defra when at the World Bank, suggests that more ecological solutions, based on engaging and supporting small farmers could yield the most dramatic change. Reliance on single technology solutions is unlikely to resolve the complex array of problems ahead, which are partly social, partly environmental and partly about control over food systems"

January 4 2010 ~ "how to deliver optimum levels of home production, sustainably"

In last July's Sustainable Development Commission's recommendations to Government Food Security and Sustainability: The perfect fit (pdf), DEFRA was recommended to "undertake specific sector assessments for grain, meat and dairy, fruit, vegetables, fibre and forestry, assessing them for their contribution to home consumption, environment, employment, economy and health, and indicating how to deliver optimum levels of home production, sustainably." We remember Dr James Bellini, a year ago, telling us on Radio 4 to make some very radical lifestyle changes in the next fifteen or twenty years if it's going to have any effect at all - not importing or genetically modifying our livestock and crops, but getting back to traditional seasonal food grown locally. The loss of fossil fuel energy and fertilisers is going to make the UK vulnerable to food shortages for the first time since the Second World War. The government is finally waking up to this - but many would say that some of the solutions suggested in its food strategy paper are suicidally foolish. The Sunday Telegraph also reports on the fact that five months ago Government negotiators opposed mandatory labelling in talks held with European Union member states. "Leaked papers from the European Council reveal how 11 countries, including France and Italy, called for mandatory origin labels on all non-processed food. The amendment, put at a meeting on July 31, was defeated by the UK and nine other countries. " Nick Herbert is quoted ".. Ministers have been caught out promising action to British farmers and consumers while their officials have been voting against the policy in Brussels."

January 2nd 2010 ~ Calling for reappraisal of DEFRA's priorities.

The Yorkshire Post has an article by Richard Ellison, NFU regional director for Yorkshire, on the subject of the CAP and the need for a vigorous reappraisal of DEFRA's priorities.
He wants to see a full review of Defra's executive agencies and an examination of their roles, functions and areas of duplicated work.
A cost-benefit analysis on sheep tagging, he believes, would show that EID is not fit for purpose.
On disease control, he calls for an eradication plan for bTB that effectively tackles all sources of the disease.
We would add that disease control policies need urgently to be re-examined, rather than merely updated every year, in order to ensure they are based on the soundest scientific and veterinary expertise each year and are efficient, humane and environmentally helpful. As Richard Ellison says on the vital issue of food security:
"the days of agricultural production being viewed as a rather inconvenient by-product of land and countryside management are behind us."
If DEFRA is to regain respect, it must become once again a Ministry of Agriculture, paid for by taxpayers to help those taxpayers who provide the landscape and the nation's food. (There is a new warmwell page on DEFRA for 2010)

January 1 2010 ~ "The beginning of a new decade is a time to look forward as well as back."

Although today's daelnet.co.ukarticle looks back in understandable anger at the decade when New Labour "demonstrated they had no understanding of rural affairs but, much worse, that they also couldn't care less" , the beginning of the new decade, says the article, shows some promise.
While we should never forget the idiocies, especially what the writer calls the "unbelievably chaotic" handling of foot and mouth, the foolishness of policies that mean "Britain produces less of its own food that almost any other developed nation" , the "unmitigated disaster" of Margaret Beckett's time as Minister for DEFRA and the RPA, the cuts to the flood defence budgets "just as the country was about to be hit by the worst floods in living memory" and the grim future for hilly areas like the Yorkshire Dales that
"... could soon be peppered by huge wind turbines which are grossly inefficient and make their living from subsides from the taxpayer rather than the wind."
- there is positive and optimistic thinking too; changing attitudes and a greener approach to agriculture may, (hopes the article), get rid of agri-business brutality. Battery poultry farming could make way for "genuinely free range chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys" and, most positive hope of all,
" with luck...food could be produced here in the UK instead of being imported from some country with dodgy animal welfare standards"
Read the article

January 1 2010~ "Although we still hear the right things in DEFRA speeches, policy statements and announcements, its actions speak louder than words"

Yorkshire Dales News reports that the Tenant Farmers Association are calling for a new Cabinet Post for Agriculture and Food - a real Minister of Agriculture.
Given the growing threat of world shortages, the very real danger is that it will not be possible to import enough food for the population - with consequences grim to imagine. The TFA national chairman, Greg Bliss, is quoted:
"... Britain has always been a trading nation ... International trade in food must continue to be an important part of our nation's identity but we should not rely upon it for our food security.
Sadly it would appear that DEFRA has largely forgotten the need to preserve a vibrant agricultural industry in Britain. ...Despite the rhetoric...DEFRA has allowed itself to be swayed by single issue environmental groups towards unsustainable policy choices and short term thinking. The DEFRA experiment has failed, it has already lost energy and climate change policy to another Department and it is time agriculture and food went the same way."

January 1 2009 ~Off with its head

The "DEFRA experiment" was to rebrand MAFF during the foot and mouth excesses of 2001. Leadership is now so badly at sea that it is hardly surprising that morale among the rank and file is sinking even further.
A rethink is desperately needed about humanising the Department, about top priorities, about making easier relationships and communicating in clearer language so that real achievement can happen. Yet, ironically, it was Helen Ghosh herself, asserting that she wanted to crack down on "poor performance", who sought to impose from above a complicated means of appraising staff called "Individual Performance Management". No proper pilot was run and the result was that in 2009 7% of Defra staff lodged formal grievances, compared to about 0.04% in the previous year.
Could any organisation have lost its way, its sense of proportion and its sense of humour so entirely and so disastrously?
The documents found here suggest that the likely consequences for any member of DEFRA staff daring to question and challenge is going to be anything but a polite and interested consideration. (The Mad Tea Party in Alice comes inevitably to mind.)
DEFRA does, of course, achieve some good and useful things and it would be cheering to hear more about them - but without the jargon and self satified political nonsense of DEFRASpeak, that weird, cold travesty of the English language.

31 December 2009 ~ Gareth Vaughan blames EU auditors and officialdom for a "completely inhuman attitude to genuine errors and situations arising as a result of human tragedies."

The Farmers Guardian quotes the Farmers Union of Wales president who was on a farm visit on Powys yesterday when he said that EU officiousness and inflexible interpretation of rules "completely undermines any faith in the EU being a proportionate and fair institution."
"...WAG officials live in a climate of fear, generated by the threat that EU auditors will find fault with a decision, irrespective of any moral justification, resulting in Wales having to pay millions in fines to Europe, known as 'disallowance'. In many of these cases all parties acknowledge that the circumstances are exceptional, and that the penalty is effectively immoral. Yet officials claim that EU regulations make no allowance for extreme conditions, and that penalties must therefore be applied in order to avoid the auditors imposing massive fines."
One is reminded of the comment made by one of the farmers DEFRA refused adequately to compensate in spite of the Ombudsman's ruling (see below) "...we have to stick to our side of the rules, when they don't stick to their side of the rules, there seems to be no sanction against them..."

December 29/30 2009 ~Final Solution in Holland - three cheers for technology?

In the printed issue of Farmers Weekly, international farming journals have contributed to answering the global poll "How are we going to feed the world?" (see http://www.fwi.co.uk/landing-page/international-poll/) with their editors' comments on farming. The Dutch contribution (see pdf page ) boasts of "producing staggering amounts of food in a relatively small area" claims gleefully that they have "mastered a more intensive way of farming" and announces "..In Holland we believe there is always a technical solution to any problem.."
This astonishing piece of complacency ignores the fact that the present "technical solution", necessitated by the consequences of the Netherlands confining its goats in factory farms and leaving the Q-fever problem to become a crisis instead of vaccinating, is a mass killing of pregnant goats and unborn kids - in their thousands.
The people who have to carry out such slaughter are unlikely to be boasting about it - although when one looks at the self satisfied claims of a company chillingly called "Total Culling Concept", even this is perhaps in doubt.

Dec 28 2009 ~ Is hunting really as important as other cruelty issues?

The Association of Chief Police Officers acknowledged that the Hunting Act was regarded as "unenforceable". Exemptions allow hunts to take place, most hunts are perfectly legal and the practice is actually more widespread than ever. Although hunting for sport seems to many of us a very unpleasant way for civilised people to amuse themselves, there are many cogent arguments about how hunting not only preserves traditional countryside and rural economies but also, in terms of animal cruelty, keeps healthy foxes safe from nastier ways of culling such as snaring, trapping and poisoning. In targetting the weakest, hunting also keeps down the numbers of foxes with mange, which in turn protects dogs from the disease.
Can the angrier political voices not see the paradox that factory farming with its overuse of antibiotics, lack of fresh air and sunshine and real danger of zoonoses - continues unchecked while the fury about country hunting gets all the headlines?
A recent Defra funded study showed that a quarter of broiler chickens suffer from painful leg disorders, yet when over 40% of all UK MPs supported EDM 581 (see below), calling for clear and honest labelling on chicken meat and urging the UK Government to improve the welfare of chickens reared for meat, it wasn't enough to get proper protection for poultry. Will 2010 show a better sense of proportion on the issues that matter most? Protecting animals helps protect human health too.

December 26 2009 ~ 'Tis the season when marketing drives phenomenal waste.

The Independent's excellent article on FareShare, the UK's only national food bank. Last year it redistributed 3,100 tonnes of still-fit-to-eat food - equivalent to 7.4 million meals. Instead of relying on hand-outs from the food industry, FareShare acts as a food waste broker and distributes produce through its network of 12 regional depots. The Independent quotes Tony Lowe, its chief executive:
"The food industry talks about sending waste to anaerobic digestion plants and composting. But by matching quality surpluses with organisations that work with people who don't have regular access to proper, nutritional meals, however, you can ensure that surplus food is used for its primary purpose - human consumption."
Individuals, he feels, need to to challenge food companies and supermarkets and ask them just where their surplus food is going. "We need consumers to back the idea of FareShare just as they have already backed Fairtrade. If consumers want it, the food industry will make it happen." The big problemis that once surplus food is considered "waste" it gets treated as such so it immediately becomes unusable.

December 23 2009 ~ Will lessons be learned from the Netherlands?

The Q fever situation in the Netherlands is dreadful for all concerned - the killing of pregnant animals - and in such huge numbers - is painful even to contemplate. Carrying out such killing, especially when slaughter methods are anything but straightforward, will be traumatic.
As the paper: "Q Fever in Bulgaria and Slovakia" warns, after noting the dramatic increase in goat numbers in Bulgaria:
"..... absence of vaccination of domestic animals in Bulgaria could contribute to the maintenance of C. burnetii and therefore to increased possibility of human infection.... One can conclude that in Bulgaria there is a permanent threat of more Q-fever outbreaks unless preventive measures, including improvement of veterinary services and vaccination of domestic animals, particularly goats, are established..."
Even to the layman, the lesson is self-evident: if veterinary and human medical expertise cannot work in tandem and officialdom waits until a crisis has happened, any reactive policy is likely to be far too late and will involve both grim decisions and appalled public opinion. Where effective vaccines exist, they must be used in time. As for Bluetongue, it is France's unpopular decision to continue with compulsory vaccination that is likely to protect its UK neighbour. Foot and Mouth marker vaccines, so much more advanced, are not used in Europe for purely protectionist reasons. This has meant that susceptible animals are wholly naive and any incursion of the virus could lead to a repeat of 2001 or 2007. The consequences of hoping for the best, as the Netherlands have now discovered, are horrible indeed.

December 22 2009 ~ "Inexcusable" says Dr Watkins, "that the Q fever outbreak in Holland was allowed to grow over 3 years to a situation they can only handle by slaughtering.."

Dr Ruth Watkins is rightly incensed by the situation in the Netherlands. As she says on Twitter, "Vaccination of uninfected young female goats before they are put to the Billy for the first time with killed phase 1 Q fever vaccine works well. We are not allowed to use this vaccine for our domestic animals; EU and DEFRA prohibit it - yet it can be used for humans who are at high risk."
She adds that she is cynical about the Dutch chief vet's claim that this Q fever strain is "uniquely more pathogenic". As she says, "Killing 10 000s pregnant goats is awful. " Will lessons be learned from this? See Q Fever page

December 22 2009 ~ Birds Eye has come clean about its misleading "Great British Menu" label

Thanks to Twitter and to the food champion, Rob Ward, (who runs the Honest Labelling campaign) we learn that Birds Eye, whose Roast Chicken Dinner, for example, uses imported meat and is manufactured in Republic of Ireland, has finally dropped its "Great British Menu" label on the package. However it has replaced it with the almost equally misleading word "Traditional". What's more, the pack still has a picture of rolling countryside. Interesting that so many giant manufacturers who make use of foreign imports and intensive methods still exploit consumers' deeply ingrained love of the English countryside and all things natural and traditional in an attempt to mislead them about what they are buying. But this rethink on the part of Birds Eye is a good sign. Buying British and buying local is more and more necessary for the survival of food production in the UK. See more here and on Twitter.

December 22 2009 ~ interest-free loans will help farmers to upgrade their equipment to become more energy efficient

The Farmers Guardian reports on DEFRA's offer to farmers of unsecured, interest-free loans of up to £20,000 to invest in energy efficient equipment. They will be available from February 2010, between £3,000 and £20,000, and are part of the Carbon Trust's "Big Business Refit", the a nationwide campaign encouraging businesses to replace old, energy intensive equipment. Tom Delay, chief executive of the Carbon Trust, is quoted:
"Upgrading old equipment using our loans scheme is an excellent way for farmers to be more competitive in difficult times, by cutting their costs and reducing carbon emissions. "
The Carbon Trust has about £12 million to offer in loans, thought to be enough for about 1,000 farmers, available on a first come, first served basis. Read in full

December 19 2009 ~ RPA's front-line staff "courteous and as helpful as they possibly could".... "the real failure to deliver lay far above them, at a senior level" (Alister Borthwick)

The Eastern Daily Press today reports on DEFRA's defiance to Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, following her finding that there was maladministration by the Rural Payments Agency in the implementation of the 2005 Single Payment Scheme. She said, ".. finite resources should not be used as an excuse for failing to provide a fair remedy." DEFRA, however, refuses to compensate as required the two farmers whose complaints were examined in detail. One of them, Mr Borthwick, is quoted by the EDP:
"Basically Defra set the rules, and we have to stick to our side of the rules, when they don't stick to their side of the rules, there seems to be no sanction against them.... I have a record of every telephone conversation I've had with RPA and all the people I've spoken to. ...We keep getting reminders from the RPA to submit our claim by May 15, or we will be fined."
Lack of clear communication and of understanding led to the fiasco in 2006 - a problem that was not the fault of the rank and file. The Parliamentary Ombudsman's full report (159 pages) gives a great deal of background detail, including all the buck passing that seems to have gone on. During the preceedings of the EFRA Committee in 2006, the Permanent Secretary of DEFRA, Helen Ghosh, (in her version of English that illustrates perhaps one reason why communication with the Department is seen as such a problem) said:
"That indeed unarguably was the volume issue which was the greatest challenge to the RPA..." (sic)
More on the RPA page.

December 18 2009 ~ More delay over Supermarket Ombudsman decision

A decision was expected last month but supermarket lobbying has led to the delay.
"The Government is trying to sit on its hands for as long as possible. The Competition Commission can request a response within 90 days but the department is not required to accede. I'm very concerned. I'm sure the department is having talks with supermarkets. I've asked who and when and if I'm not told I will make a Freedom of Information request,"says Andrew George.
More on Ombudsman page

December 18 2009 ~ Scotland's frustration that the budget for animal health in Scotland is still controlled from Whitehall.

For months (see below) Scotland has wanted to control its own budget for animal health. The UK Press Association today has quoted the Rural Affairs Secretary for Scotland, Richard Lochhead, who says that it is "unacceptable" that Scotland does not have responsibility for funding animal health and welfare. The Scottish Government already is responsible for its own animal welfare policy. "And a dozen meetings have taken place with the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to try to reach a deal to devolve animal health and welfare funding."

December 18 2009 ~ Bluetongue vaccination will be voluntary in Scotland next year

More detail on the Bluetongue page.

December 17 2009 ~ DEFRA will introduce a maximum stocking density of 39kg/m² for intensively farmed poultry

(The Farmers Guardian uses the euphemism, "conventionally reared".) At present, more than 90% of UK birds are already stocked at less than 39kg/sq m. Producers who want to stock above 33kg/sq m will now need to register by 30 June 2010 (see FWi). Scheme. The EU's Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare (SCAHAW) decreed that "above 30kg/m² [up to 15 chickens/m²], even with very good environmental control systems, there is a steep rise in the frequency of serious problems."
The popular Early Day Motion 57. introduced in November by Adrian Sanders, noted
"with concern the proposed regulation to increase the maximum permitted stocking density for chickens from the recommended 15 to 17 to 17 to 19 chickens per square metre, with a further extension to 19 to 21 chickens if certain criteria are met."
Higher stocking densities result in an increase in pathologies, reduce behavioural activities and severely affect walking ability, according to Mr Sanders, and his EDM called on the Government not to abandon its previous recommended stocking density of 15 to 17 chickens per square metre. In 2002, DEFRA's own welfare code said: "the maximum stocking density for chickens kept to produce meat for the table should be 34 kg/m2, which should not be exceeded at any time during the growing period."
Leaving aside the ethical considerations of overcrowding, the dangers to human and animal health of intensive poultry farms are well explained here.
The Battery Hen Welfare Trust aims to educate the public about the egg laying industry focussing on battery farming and its re-home battery hen scheme is proving very popular across the UK.

December 17 2009 ~ Farm4Bio reconciles the need to produce more food while feeding wildlife in winter

Every arable farm has areas which are not efficient to crop. DEFRA's excellent LINK-funded project, Farm4bio, begun in January 2006, examines the biodiversity impact of various treatments applied to 1.5-6ha (4-15-acre) strips or blocks within certain farmed areas. The Farmers Guardian today quotes Jim Orson, the project leader:
"...floristically-enhanced grassland (FEG) and wild bird cover can increase plant diversity and provide a better habitat for invertebrates than grass margins and game cover... FEG can be sown in awkward corners, and mixtures of winter bird cover such as triticale and winter vetch should be sown around the edge of fields. Autumn sowing will increase insect bird food early in the spring and minimise pollen beetle damage to brassicas."
For winter bird food, Mr Orson said the key thing was quantity, not the overall area of the cover crop. "It needs to be open enough for birds to be able to get in, lots of seed available, but not too thick a crop. Food must be available through until the end of March." Farmers Weekly (June) gives more detail about the project.

December 16 2009 ~ "Whitehall's solution was to suppress that part of the report..."

"How can we be expected to believe any research-based report that has been through the busy, grubby hands of civil servants and politicians?" asks an article in today's Independent commenting on the quiet doctoring or "streamlining" of report into the noise made by wind turbines and the effect on people who live near them. Although commissioned by the government, its findings were not what the government wanted to hear. The proposed reduction in permitted noise was awkwardly large - so Whitehall's solution was to suppress that part of the report. See Windfarms page

December 16 2009 ~ RPA: "disastrous IT system, poor management, delays in payments the biggest debacle in the committee's history..." says Public Accounts Committee

Edward Leigh has criticised DEFRA's complacency in failing to spot problems within the RPA and allowing millions of pounds of public money to be wasted. The Committee has told the RPA to report on how it is meeting concerns addressed by the National Audit Office in October. This latest report from the Public Accounts Committee (see Farmers Weekly) quotes Edward Leigh as saying,
"Considerable responsibility must lie at DEFRA's door..DEFRA has either not grasped the seriousness of what has been happening or been reluctant to face up to problems."
More detail and recent posts on the Rural Payments Agency page. UPDATE The Yorkshire Post headline: Rural Payments Agency is told to apologise to farmers .bbc.co.uk/today/hi/listen_again/default.stm to hear Ann Abrahams on the Today Programme

December 16 2009 ~ Community Infrastructure Levy must not be a tax on food, says farmers' associations

The National Farmers' Union, the Country Land and Business Association, the Tenant Farmers' Association and the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers have been campaigning to have agricultural development exempt from the government's controversial scheme for raising taxes from developers - the Community Infrastructure Levy. (This is intended as a form of "planning gain" tax, where part of the increase in the value of land when planning permission is granted must be used to finance the "supporting infrastructure", such as schools and is supposed to 'unlock housing growth') They want to see agricultural buildings exempt
"as firstly there is no uplift in land value when planning permission is granted for their development; if left in place they say the levy would, in effect, be a tax on food production as it could only be met from farming income. And second, as agricultural development is required for agricultural purposes (e.g. livestock housing or commodity storage) it has minimal impact on the infrastructure that the CIL is expected to fund.
Above all we should be encouraging farmers to invest in the necessary new buildings needed to support the additional food production required to help feed a growing global population; this is a point recognised by both Government and the wider industry."
Press release

December 14 2009 ~ Slaughter on Suspicion policy - on it goes

We have been reminded by a baffled emailer that DEFRA's Framework Response Contingency Plan still appears to make no mention at all of on-site rapid diagnostic testing for Foot and Mouth disease. In what DEFRA refers to as an AMBER situation "suspect animal(s)/birds showing lesions are culled" without benefit of testing even when "Lesions and clinical disease" are "suggestive of the notifiable disease but not entirely convincing." The sending of samples to and from Pirbright and the wait for results is thought to take too long to allow the animals with "not entirely convincing" clinical signs to live, so they must "culled on suspicion as a preventative measure under the slaughter on suspicion policy".
As we have said so many times before, on-site, accurate, diagnostic tests have been available for use for nearly a decade and can deliver results, there on the farm, in well under an hour. Why on earth not use them?
One is utterly at a loss to understand why officialdom cannot feel grateful for the blessings of modern technology in the case of Foot and Mouth disease; rapid, on-site testing quickly confirms or dispels initial visual diagnosis.
As our correspondent says, it is impossible to comprehend why there has been so little progress in nearly nine long years. (FMD pages)

December 14 2009 ~ "It is the disconnection we have with what we consume that is the primary cause of the wasteful and destructive culture we live in.."

One element of the many heartwarming and inspiring items covered in the latest Transition Town Totnes Bulletin (37) was Rob Hopkins' report of the evening talk in the methodist Church, Totnes by Mark Boyle. Mr Boyle spent last year living entirely without without money. He said:
".. If we all had to grow your own food again we wouldn't waste one third of it as we do here in the UK today. If we had to make our own tables and chairs, we wouldn't throw them out the moment we changed the interior décor. If we had to clean our own drinking water, we sure as hell wouldn't foul it. We've absolutely no respect or real appreciation for the embodied energy, destruction and suffering that goes into the things we consume and buy today, and hence the symptoms of this separation of the consumer from the consumed (sweatshops, environmental destruction, wars over resources, factory farms) relentlessly persists. Money is the tool that has increasingly enabled humanity to exaggerate this disconnection with what they consume and therefore has a huge role to play in climate change and the destruction of our natural environment."
As an emailer wrote yesterday: "...why cannot those in positions of power send a simple message to the humankind? Stop being so profligate if you care for the future of the planet and the wonderful complexity and biodiversity that we so take for granted and enjoy."

December 14 2009 ~ "Some believe that a decision by the the UN to include soil carbon in its remit will be met by an explosion of the intensive farming systems best suited to exploit it."

Ed Hamer, a freelance journalist specialising in agriculture and globalisation issues, is reporting from the Copenhagen climate summit. He concludes
"They fear that such a scenario - which could see the UN pour $1.5bn of funding into further intensification scheme - could have serious consequences, barely 18-months on from a global food crisis that pushed an estimated 90m people into food poverty worldwide."
A worrying article at the Ecologist.

December 13 2009 ~ A global look at the risk of zoonoses

Recognising the factors that have made the risks from zoonoses so much greater, DFID, (Department for International Development) held a meeting on Friday for
"vets, virologists, academics and other experts in animal-to-human diseases in order to identify hotspots where the next global pandemic is most likely to come from and how best to prevent it emerging or spreading." (see more at www.egovmonitor.com/node/31945)
In view of the distressing Q fever situation in the Netherlands and the increasing realisation that bTB is a zoonosis with more and more hotspots in the UK itself and no sign of a solution, such an initiative to get human and veterinary medicine to work together must be welcome.

December 13 2009 ~ Q fever: "I think the vets are right," says Dr Ruth Watkins

Her email today should be read in full on the Q fever page with its suggecstions for what should be done as a matter of great urgency. Then she adds, "... Instead of just killing everything and learning very little this would be a way of containing the situation. Spread at the abattoirs is certain, and possibly en route from births in the transport, and there is still the removal of infected dust at the farms to be worked out too." Read in full

December 13 2009 ~ Q fever: "our kind of intensive livestock farming in a highly populated country is asking for trouble"

The broadsheet, de Volkskrant agrees with leader of the Partij voor de Dieren, Marianne Thieme's, verdict that the government is guilty of "culpable homicide" for failing to act earlier and putting lives at risk. The paper points out that while the A(H1N1) flu virus has been grabbing the headlines, Q fever has been left in the shade. In an interview with AD, Ms Thieme stood by her accusation and blamed the Christian Democrat party, the senior coalition partner.
"The Christian Democrats support factory farming, and that's a dead end...our kind of intensive livestock farming in a highly populated country is asking for trouble."
In 1995, there were 7,600 goats in the Netherlands. There are now over 350,000, mostly in intensive farms. (More on Q fever page.)

December 12 2009 ~ Q fever slaughter plan - vets do not want to go through "the trauma of killing healthy, pregnant animals"

In the Q Fever outbreak in the Netherlands an increasingly distressing situation is unfolding that will recall the trauma of foot and mouth in 2001. It will also recall the revulsion of Dutch vets, such as Dr Peter Poll of Utrecht and their decision not to carry out future eradication programmes considered unethical. Many veterinary surgeons have already said they are not prepared to cooperate in the official Dutch policy of killing thousands of unvaccinated pregnant animals whether or not they are infected. Vets are most unhappy too about proposed methods of slaughter. Ludo Hellebrekers, president of the Dutch Veterinary Society (KNMvD) is quoted
"We do not want to go through the trauma of the culling operations during the pig and bird flu again... it is felt "ethically unacceptable" for the unborn lamb to die a slow death"
The KNMvD is pleading for all animals on infected farms to be tested for the Q-fever bacterium first - but time and laboratory capacity may make this problematic. As one emailer from the Netherlands says, "We are heading towards a disastrous situation." More detail on Q fever page.

December 12 2009 ~ African Horse Sickness- "no mandatory cull of animals on infected premises unless the secretary of state chooses to request it"

Horse and Hound is full of praise for the way DEFRA has worked with the Horse industry:
"Defra was praised by the equine sector for heeding advice outlined in a study that showed AHS could wipe out at least half of the UK horse industry and cost the country £3.5million in lost revenue if policies outlined in the European directive on AHS were employed..."
More on the AHS page

December 11 2009 ~ London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games STILL plans to serve up factory farmed chicken and pork at the 2012 games.

Not surprisingly, Compassion in World Farming and Chicken Out are deeply disappointed. Joanna Lumley is quoted:
"Why would the Olympic organisers not go for the best of the best? What a massive disappointment it will be for our country not to show itself in its best colours with the world's eyes upon us.."
One needs only a couple of seconds to urge the Committee to serve high quality food produced to good standards of animal welfare. The email to send and sign is at action.ciwf.org.uk.

December 11 2009 ~ Should the RPA not be complimented and lauded?

On October 30 we posted an exchange about the RPA late payment problems suffered by Mr Peter Philpot who farms near Billericay. Hilary Benn had said to Mr Philpot's MP, John Baron,
"I would be very happy if the hon. Gentleman gave me the details of his constituent, in order to pursue that case. It is precisely for this reason that we announced in September a review of the RPA, so we can learn the lessons and improve the service to the level that farmers have a right to expect."
Yesterday's Hansard recorded Mr Baron's polite reminder that the details asked for had been
"..sent the same day, but since then neither my constituent nor my office have heard anything. Will Ministers consider the matter again as a matter of urgency? Otherwise, we can only draw the conclusion that the RPA is nothing more than a master-class in misadministration."
Jim Fitzpatrick had remarked a few moments earlier that he felt it was "a little churlish of the shadow Secretary of State not to welcome the once again improved performance of the Rural Payments Agency. It has been improving year on year, and this year it managed to pay out £1.3 billion, which is almost twice as much as last year, two weeks earlier than last year to four times as many farmers. From our point of view, that should be complimented and lauded."
(See also recent postings about the RPA)

December 11 2009 ~ Israeli government accuses Britain of encouraging a boycott of goods from West Bank settlements.

Until now, products have been simply labelled "Produce of the West Bank", but under the new, voluntary guidance issued by DEFRA, supermarkets selling goods from the West Bank should state explicitly on the labels whether the content has come from Israeli settlement or Palestinian-owned farms. The Jewish Chronicle quotes the Foreign Office who said that it opposed a boycott of Israel, but added that consumers should be able to
"choose for themselves what they buy. We have been very clear both in public and in private that settlements are illegal and an obstacle to peace."
Many newspapers seem aware of a simmering diplomatic row - as Google News shows.

December 11 2009 ~ "We are encouraging retailers to mark and label countries of origin more clearly.."

An aversion to eating veal is unfortunately widespread in the UK and dates from the time when veal calves were crated here (As they still are in many other countries). It was interesting to read that Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op) during oral answers on food labelling urged that "we must ensure that people eat English or British veal, rather than imported veal, which comes from animals that have much poorer lives than our own animals" (Hansard) Jim Fitzpatrick's answer. Extract:
"... the Government have been working on this for some time. Veal is one of the products whose labelling ought to be clearer under regulations...We are encouraging retailers to mark and label countries of origin more clearly. .."
Sausages, for example, can be processed from imported meat reared under conditions that would be illegal in this country - and then labelled as British.
Nick Herbert wanted to know why, since the government has been talking about tighter labelling for a year, did it then oppose mandatory country of origin labelling in European Union negotiations this year. Mr Fitzpatrick's answer, that "competency in those matters rests with the European Union", will hardly have been found reassuring.

December 11 2009 ~ Should Ombudsman's powers be "to enforce both the honest labelling of food and humane animal welfare standards for imported food to match the excellent standards in British farming?"

Jim Fitzpatrick's answer was disappointingly evasive. (Read Hansard) See also Ombudsman page

December 10 2009 ~ Q fever "..Why didn't vaccination start in 2007 when the outbreak was first documented?.."

Dr Ruth Watkins, the virologist and farmer, shares the frustration of many at the slaughter policy announced yesterday in the Netherlands against Q Fever, a disease dangerous for humans as well as ruminants. "This is where delays in product licensing and economic arguments of huge bureacracies seem to be fatally flawed in Northern Europe.." She writes here about the Q fever crisis, the need to protect animals and people - and the EU's disastrously obstructive rules against vaccines.
"The EU is always unready, partly because it has obstructive rules in place against vaccines, in which economic interests play a major part, and then late, it takes drastic action to kill thousands of animals as though we still lived in medieval times... ."
The vaccine Coxevac made by Ceva in France has been shown to be effective - but its use was delayed in the Netherlands - a failure that, after the deaths of six patients with an underlying illness, has led to demands for such widespread killing of pregnant animals. The vaccine continues to be banned in the UK.
More on the Q fever page.

December 10 2009 ~ Any uninfected or vaccinated animals that the Department thinks should be slaughtered can legally be slaughtered under new Northern Ireland legislation

It is with gloom andf foreboding that we read the Diseases of Animals Bill - described by the NI Minister, Michelle Gildernew, as "a balanced, robust and significant piece of legislation" - but, as in England, it allows any lay magistrate to issue a warrant authorising an inspector (qualifications unspecified) to enter any premises, "if necessary using reasonable force" and authorises or requires the slaughter of animals or poultry which the Department thinks should be slaughtered whether or not the animals or poultry -
(a) are affected with the disease or suspected of being so affected;
(b) are or have been in contact with animals or poultry so affected;
(c) have been in any way exposed to the disease; (d) have been treated with serum or vaccine (or both) against the disease."
"Swift and decisive action to deal with a disease outbreak" may be thought a euphemism for the political convenience of killing. As the barrister, Stephen Tromans pointed out at the time of the Animal Health Bill,
"under the principle of proportionality, the decision maker should consider whether there are other and less damaging means by which the public interest could be protected..."
Many will fear that measures giving the power to slaughter any animal that a government Department "thinks should be slaughtered" have little to do with veterinary science or risk assessment or challenging outdated EU protectionism, considerably more to do with conferring powers and protecting profits. In 2001 the widespread (and actually illegal) killing of animals that were uninfected was not instrumental in stopping the disease. Swiftly imposed emergency vaccination however - which was legal under Section 16, Part 2 of the already existing 1981 Act - would have saved millions, including the irreplaceable breeding stock that was lost. Strong and urgent representation should then have been made to the EU to revise its outdated trade rules.

December 10 2009 ~ The revised Animal Health Act of 2002 was rushed through parliament to give mass culling retrospective legality

The new NI Diseases of Animals Bill reminds us of Lord Whitty's admission ( HL Vol. 639, cols. 1234-5) that much of the mass slaughter of 2001 was illegal. He spoke of
" ... gaps in the powers of the Government... powers that we do not currently have. One such power is the power of preventative slaughter.... intended to give us that power which we lacked and which we would need in a future outbreak."
Despite the Government's three-line whip, the Bill was initially defeated in the House of Lords by Lord Moran's amendment before finally being passed. Many members, such as the Countess of Mar (H.L. Vol. 630, cols. 910-911) for example, aghast at its implications, spoke out robustly against the Bill in the debate of March 31 2002. She reminded the House that Pirbright itself was set up in 1924 as a result of criticism of the Ministry of Agriculture's "primitive slaughter policy".
"...Nothing much seems to have changed...it was clear that no one had learnt any lessons from the past when they embarked on the mass slaughter of so many animals, the majority of which, it seems, were healthy....."
It must seem odd and frightening to many that killing is regarded as a better way to protect animals than proper care at borders and better legislation about cross border transportation. Above all,the first defence of a civilised and modern approach will involve the use of rapid diagnosis on site to isolate infection and modern vaccination to ring fence any incursion of disease or protect herds and flocks before disease arrives.

December 10 2009 ~ What does DEFRA's website cost?

A question yesterday (Hansard) revealed that updating and maintaining DEFRA's websites has cost around £340,000 in each of the past two years. Additional costs in 2009-10 of £71,149 "have been incurred for specialist web design, audience research and web accessibility auditing" Dan Norris added that "Website hosting services-as well as a range of IT applications-are provided as part of DEFRA's overall IT service provision and the costs of this aspect of website maintenance cannot be readily disaggregated."
(Warmwell.com costs nothing to update and maintain while web hosting is £181.94)

December 10 2009 ~ Tamiflu's effectiveness is being called into question.

In the UK alone the estimated bill for Tamiflu is approaching half a billion pounds. Channel 4 News revealed on Tuesday that serious scientific questions are being raised over the evidence base for Tamiflu. Roche, who have made a fortune out of the drug, are suspected of withholding evidence from trials. More on H1n1 page

December 9 2009 ~ "..replacing cows and sheep for intensive goat farming in sheds. ..."

Q fever in the Netherlands. During a special press conference tonight in the Netherlands, new harsher policies about the zoonosis Q fever have been announced. On farms outside the infected areas, where vaccination was voluntary - if Q-fever vaccination did not take place, all pregnant animals will now be slaughtered whether they are infected or not. The measure should be applied to farms where the results of tank milk sampling (PCR-testing) repeatedly demonstrate Q-fever infection. It appears that culling should be a onetime measure before lambing or any abortions take place. More on the Q fever page.
Goat rearing in Holland has become an intensive industry. As one emailer remarked recently: "..replacing cows and sheep for intensive goat farming in sheds. And BINGO! What idiots people are..."

December 9 2009 ~ "absurd for the government to announce its intentions to put more services online ..."

The Farmers Weekly reports on Gordon Brown's plans to save £35 billion a year by 2011 by cutting civil service wages and putting services online. DEFRA's permanent secretary, Helen Ghosh, has said any potential cuts in public spending would have "a minimal impact on the delivery of vital services to farmers" - but CLA president William Worsley is quoted:
"It is absurd for the government to announce its intentions to put more services online when 25% of rural residences and businesses cannot receive effective broadband...."
The Shadow DEFRA secretary Nick Herbert appears to recognise the looming threat for the funding for animal disease measures, and also telling NFU members in Dorchester: "Food security is as important as energy security and we must not leave tackling it until too late."

December 9 2009 ~ "...the average hill farmer earning just £5,000 a year.."

The Farmers Guardian last month noted that in 2008, at a time when farmers were suffering from the deepening economic crisis, bonuses for senior DEFRA officials were as high as £15,640.
Today, the Farmers Guardian quotes a Parliamentary Question from Tim Farron, the Lib Dem's agriculture spokesman and MP for the rural Westmorland and Lonsdale:
"With the average hill farmer earning just £5,000 a year, it's hard to justify the extravagant amounts being paid to so many civil servants. Especially when you consider hill farmers aren't getting the type of pension contributions and inflated bonuses that have become second nature in the civil service."
In view of high profile mistakes such as "the loss of 100,000 farmers' personal bank details by the Rural Payments Agency", Mr Farron wondered how far the top DEFRA civil servants really deserved such payments.

December 4 2009 ~ Hilary Benn has visited a Cockermouth farm hit by the floods and promised that measures specifically designed to help farmers are a top priority.

He is quoted by the Cumberland News
"I wanted to come and see for myself the impact on farmers, the debris and the problems of fallen stock and I want to look at what further help can be given to help farmers back on their feet."
Mr Benn was in Cumbria two weeks ago and said yesterday that he was very, very impressed with the work that has been carried out to reunite the community divided by the destroyed bridges.

December 4 2009 ~ Boris Johnson backs "Capital Growth" with a £150,000 fund to help Londoners grow their own food in under-used areas of the capital.

"Capital Growth" was launched last year with the aim of creating 2,012 community food growing spaces by 2012. London Food Link is part of the environment charity, Sustain, and already has nearly 150 spaces being cultivated across the capital. The programme was awarded a Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Commendation this year. Ben Reynolds, London Food Link, quoted in the press release, says
"We have been amazed at the great response... it's clear these spaces are making a real difference to people's lives."
See also www.capitalgrowth.org

December 4 2009 ~ Poor nations weren't growing their own food because of development programs initiated by the World Bank, the International Montetary Fund, and the U.S. government.

A very interesting article at the Oil Drum, although referring mainly to America, looks at how the production of cheap food has led to ecological consequences at home: (soil erosion, hazardous chemical runoff, and their impacts on air and water quality) and terrible inequalities abroad: (many countries needing aid are forced to orient their economies towards export and open their ports for import. Local farmers producing essentials go out of business, and large agribusinesses are able to move in.)
The writer, Jason Bradford, who looks coldly at the US feedlot system and the failure of regulations to protect public health and the environment, notes too how
"corn and soy breeding and seed sales are now controlled by just a few companies, and these companies now create huge corporate political interference when reforms are suggested.."
Interestingly, he quotes Barack Obama's view after the president had been reading Michael Pollan
"our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. ... it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs.."

December 4 2009 ~ Government support for Britain's banks now officially £850bn. Britain's farmers are "barely breaking even"

While farmers face ever-increasing costs and government imposed regulation, the Independent's lead article today reveals that £850 billion is the official cost of the bank bailout. Edward Leigh,the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, is quoted:
"The widespread suspicion that the bailed-out banks are using the injected funds simply to fill their pockets with gold will have been fuelled by the finding that those banks receiving taxpayer support are not likely to meet their commitments to lend ...."
The article poses questions and answers for readers baffled by the sheer enormity of the sums involved.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph today quotes Jim Paice
"... large numbers of farm businesses are barely breaking even as the costs and regulatory burdens imposed by Government increase. In recent years thousands of farmers have quit the industry, weakening our supply base and leaving us more reliant on imports of food we could produce ourselves."
Read Telegraph article and see also below

December 3 2009 ~ DEFRA is spending 5 million pounds to "review the RPA"

Dan Norris on the subject of departmental savings opined that "DEFRA will save £6 million per year in 2010-11 compared to the preceding year through economies of scale .." Now, in spite of 3 separate NAO scrutiny papers and a Committee of Public Accounts investigation into the RPA that have taken place already, £5m is to be spent on what seems to be going to mean, according to the Farmers Weekly giving
"RPA staff an indication of which areas they should target to improve the system.."
Apparently, that egregious user of the English language, Helen Ghosh, DEFRA's permanent secretary, insisted the agency was "getting to a good place".
In spite of the RPA's past performance, Ms Ghosh claimed that "England's single payment system was ahead of its time in comparison with other EU countries". The Rural Payments Agency page gives a somewhat different view.

December 3 2009 ~ Cost Sharing- no benefits and worsening lack of trust

Far from having anything to say about animal welfare or health, Jim Fitzpatrick failed to identify any benefits from Cost Sharing beyond the Government's ability to get the farming industry to take over some of the Government's costs - according to the National Chairman of theTenant Farmers' Association, Greg Bliss. He is quoted in the Yorkshire Dales News following the meeting between the TFA, National Beef Association and the Junior DEFRA Minister. The paper then comments on what it sees as long lived and increasing bitterness: resulting from two disastrous foot and mouth outbreaks in 2001 and 2007, made worse by the fact that DEFRA has persistently refused to create a supermarket Ombudsman. The paper refers to the
"most unhappy relationship between Government and agriculture since the industry was driven to almost total collapse in the 1930s - a neglect which took the nation to the verge of starvation in World War 11."
(Thanks to the FMD news service of the University of California, Davis, for this link)
With food security becoming more and more recognised as an urgent issue, the government would surely be better advised to rebuild trust with farmers and do everything possible to ensure consistent food supplies at home. (See also cost sharing page) UPDATE See also Farmers Guardian

December 2 2009 ~"This is about re-engaging people in local democracy."

The Guardian hails Transition's Rob Hopkins as a Green Community Hero. The transition plan for Totnes sets out
"what the 8,000-strong local community needs to do to become sustainable and no longer dependent on oil within 15 to 20 years.
If Hopkins is correct in his peak oil analysis - that oil will become too expensive for most of us to use within the next decade or so - the practical implications are immense. The Transition Town programme helps communities design their own sustainable route forward."
(It is fascinating to some of us that preparations for peak oil - never implicitly mentioned by government - involve the same urgent need for change as do the assumptions about anthropogenic climate change. But while the Transition movement quietly gets on with human-scale preparations from the grass roots up and makes no noise at all about money, the furious exchanges between Climate Change devotees and sceptics seems mere noisy political junketing. Tranhsition's energy comes, as Rob Hopkins says, from getting people "fired up about doing what they are passionate about". How much useful energy is to be generated from all the steam, spin and hot air that surrounds Copenhagen is yet to be seen.)

December 2 2009 ~ "too often under the current Government farmers have been undervalued and undermined.." Jim Paice

Alistair Driver in the Farmers Guardian reports on a Parliamentary Question by Jim Paice about the number of farmers who live in poverty. Jim Fitzpatrick said 25 per cent of farm households were "below the modified low income threshold." One in four.
The FG says Jim Paice "blamed excessive Government regulation for the plight many farmers are suffering" and quotes his comment: "... large numbers of farm businesses are barely breaking even as the costs and regulatory burdens imposed by Government increase. In recent years thousands of farmers have quit the industry, weakening our supply base and leaving us more reliant on imports of food..." Read in full

December 2 2009 ~ DEFRA's greenhouse spending

Hansard
Grant Shapps: To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs how much has been spent by his Department on (a) cut flowers and (b) pot plants in 2008-09. [301013]
Dan Norris: The costs in 2008-09 for cut flowers and pot plants was £25,309.76. It is not possible to split the costs between cut flowers and pot plants as requested.
(Four days earlier Dan Norris' answer about departmental savings: " DEFRA will save £6 million per year in 2010-11 compared to the preceding year through economies of scale and increasing the flexibility of its facilities....")

December 2 2009 ~ A/H1N1: "It appears as if we may see continuing, if not increasing, numbers of reports of "reverse transmission" of this zoonotic disease from humans to animal species."

H1N1 has now been recorded in cats, ferrets, dogs and geese and now there is a case in Finland concerning another pig farm where the farmers who had flu passed it on to their pigs who then tested positive for A/H1N1 on RRT/PCR. (see recent posts on the H1N1 page)

December 1 2009 ~ The report, "African Horse Sickness - Impact on the UK Horse Industry" is published today.

Paul Jepson, Chief Executive and Veterinary Director of The Horse Trust, who is the Chairman of the AHS Working Group that produced the report says it is critically important that an incursion of the disease is recognised immediately. The AHS Group has been working with the government to produce control measures - and as Brigadier Jepson said in 2007
"We want to avoid control measures that involve mass slaughter."
The report has now assessed the potential financial and social impact of an outbreak of AHS on the UK equine industry and estimates the financial cost at over £3.5 billion. Details of what the AHS Working Group want the regulations to be - they will go before Parliament next year - will be posted as soon as possible. See AHS page for more detail.

December 1 2009 ~ The forgotten farmers of flooded Cumbria

An emailer writes today about the floods in Cumbria and that "...the farmers never seem to get a mention. I looked up the Westmorland Gazette and the Cumberland Times to try to see what was going on. There were some completely unexpected and devastating effects mentioned - eg dry stone walls, hundreds of years old, flattened, and hay fields covered in several feet of gravel. And of course everything these days is such a One Day Wonder that even if known about these tragedies are immediately forgotten by the media - and by nearly everyone else as well."
Extracts from two letters in the Telegraph:
• "Residents of Cumbria should not place too much reliance on the Government's promises to rebuild infrastructure lost in the present deluge. The single-lane, temporary metal bridge, put up in Langwathby in 1968, when floods swept away the old bridge over the River Eden, is still in daily use, with no plans for replacement."
• "Having spent last week driving around south-west France, we were repeatedly held up by farmers and municipal workers clearing ditches and gullies. Shouldn't we be doing the same?"
Clearing ditches seems more to the point than filling in forms. Hilary Benn's welcome exemption of the "Good Agricultural and Environment Condition standard, GAEC 3" still carries the proviso that farmers are
"advised to record any soil damage from access to waterlogged soil, and the necessary remedial action that they will take, on their Soil Protection Review ( GAEC 1 )"
From January, the restriction on accessing waterlogged soil will be replaced with a new obligation, we read.

December 1 2009 ~"...This disconnect between people and how their food is produced"

http://www.youtube.com/user/pesticideinformation is a channel set up to support www.pesticideinformation.eu a website genuinely seeking to promote an open and honest debate on pesticides and "to better understand the arguments for and against them". An interview with Allan Buckwell, Policy Director and the Country Land and Business Association in the UK on the subject is impressive because of his calm tone and the evident fact that he understands the subject from the point of view of the farmers - but also from the point of view of consumers and manufacturers. A four minute interview (Youtube) that is well worth watching. "Let's take the right decision slowly rather than the wrong decision fast," he said - in September 2008.

November 30 2009 ~ Free feast on December 16 will highlight "the injustice of a world in which some have food to waste while others go hungry".

The Independent reports on Tristram Stuart's brilliant idea of feeding the 5,000 (passers-by in Trafalgar Square) with food that would otherwise be thrown away. The event will involve soup and smoothies - and will "highlight the social and environmental costs of food waste".
We read that food of a value of about £480 a year is wasted per average household. The Bishop of London , Richard Chartres, is quoted: "...Jesus told his disciples after feeding the 5000 to 'gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost'. At the Feeding the 5000 event, 5000 people will be fed from ingredients which otherwise would have been thrown away."
Tristram Stuart's book, Waste, was described on Sept 9th below. See also Food Security pages

November 30 2009 ~ New EID rules explained at Farmers Weekly

Jonathan Long at FWi poses and answers the many questions farmers have about the electronic tagging of sheep. The page links to a video
"...but if you have a question you'd like answering which hasn't been addressed here Farmers Weekly is giving you the chance to quiz experts online. Visit www.fwi.co.uk/eid on 8 December between 6pm and 7.30pm when we will have representatives from the National Sheep Association and Shearwell Data available to answer your questions."
See also sheeptagging page

November 29 2009 ~"...sure in our mind that a conclusion is true, we overstate the evidence for it, and expect to be vindicated."

So says Matthew Parris in the Sunday Times today on the subject of Mr Blair and his expections in 2003 of emerging " as a stalwart ally and war-winning prime minister, quite quickly gaining permanent admiration at the cost of a little immediate embarrassment.."
Meanwhile, in the Mail on Sunday, Ian Plimer writes of "uncomfortable truths" that are "suppressed and dubious evidence given undue prominence".
Nowhere, he says, is this more worryingly obvious than in the science of climate change. And in a parallel with what Chilcot must try to unravel, Plimer talks of a catastrophe provided for an anxious public by those who had everything to gain by frightening us.
"They put forward an ideology that is blind fundamentalism, unrelated to scientific facts. Politicians build new bureaucracies and pose as environmental saviours without having to face the consequences of their actions."
If Plimer - who is convinced there are no runaway greenhouse effects, tipping points or acid oceans - is right and the would-be environmental saviours are wrong, the future is looking cold indeed, particularly in view of the visceral contempt in which sceptics are held by faithful followers of the main stream. And those of us who don't know can only watch with increasing bewilderment the juggernaut that is moving towards Copenhagen. Whatever the truth about Co2, Jon Snow today is surely right to say that while the rich go on consuming wanton quantities of everything, to the exclusion and pollution of the poor, you cannot combat global climate change without combating global poverty.

November 29 2009 ~"... hopelessly compromised scientific establishment"

In his column in the Sunday Telegraph, Christopher Booker says that the importance of the leaked CRU emails can't be overestimated.
"... The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite.... ... Dr Jones's refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record ..... the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data ....
the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes... to lower past temperatures and to "adjust" recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming. ...
the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning..." (Read in full)
He regrets that the inquiry into all this may be chaired by the President of the Royal Society, fearing we may see yet another official inquiry where the outcome must, in order for political ends to be defended, turn out to be just another whitewash.

November 29 2009 ~ Artificial pork - one step closer

See today's Sunday Times. In Holland cells from a live pig in a petri dish have been used to replicate growth. No one has tasted this yet - and it looks "soggy"..

November 29 2009 ~ Supermarkets' plea to Mandelson not to appoint an Ombudsman

"Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda have held 13 meetings with Lord Mandelson and his department to halt plans to regulate their deals with suppliers," says today's Observer Details of this and latest posts on the Ombudsman page

November 29 2009 ~ We have only to look at the 2001 FMD disaster to recall the consequences when inappropriate data produces erroneous results.

In spite of the apparent lack of interest shown by mainstream media, the implications of the hacked CRU emails and revelations that raw data was erased is dawning on some. (More on Energy and Climate page.) Political dependence on Professor Roy Anderson's computer model led to the premature deaths of up to 11 million animals in 2001 - a large proportion of whom were healthy - to misery in Devon, Cumbria, Dumfries and Galloway, North Yorkshire - and anxiety and loss for the entire rural community.
David King at the 2002 Brussels inquiry was dismissive - but his answers about the computer model and the need for the mass cull can be strongly disputed.

November 28 2009 ~ NFU "optimistic" that a supermarket ombudsman will be appointed

The Yorkshire Post's article about the need to make hill farmers a special case and the NFU reaction to the Lancet report (see below) advocating a 30% cut in livestock to cut greenhouse gases ("unbelievably naive" says Peter Kendall) also said that Mr Kendall was "optimistic" about a supermarket ombudsman being appointed. More on Ombudsman page

November 27 2009 ~ 'Break up the dominance of the Supermarkets'

The "Tesco-isation" of Britain is almost complete. It has 2,300 stores in the UK and takes around an eighth of all UK retail spending. Anyone still thinking that supermarkets bring sweetness and light to local areas should read the Ecologist's portrait of Lady Caroline Cranbrook. She saved her valley in East Anglia from the superstore by amassing evidence that big supermarkets cripple local economies. She won.
"As a result there has been an explosion of local foods, numerous small retailers flourish and a thriving local food economy exists - testament to what happens with no superstore." Read in full
About three quarters of all food bought in Britain comes from one of the "Big Four" supermarkets now: Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda or Morrisons. �
The Telegraph today:
"Phillip Blond, the head of the ResPublica think-tank, launched a broad attack on Tesco and other big supermarkets, suggesting they are too big and should be broken up."
Mr Cameron was evidently impressed by Mr Blond's "fresh candid thinking". He attended the London launch of "ResPublica", a new think-tank, yesterday. Mr Blond thinks Britain should have a "moralised market", says the Telegraph, ".. where good behaviour not enforced by state regulation but encouraged by the values of individuals and companies,"

November 26 2009 ~ "Climate change is an issue we take very seriously, but eating less meat would make little difference to it." CLA

The CLA today (Thursday, 26 November) said calls to eat less meat to cut climate change are misguided and would only create other problems. The CLA believes the real answer is to find new ways to produce meat with lower Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. CLA President William Worsley said:
"Calls for people to give up eating meat to fight climate change are misjudged. We must not forget that meat provides us with key nutrients. Farming fewer livestock would only create other problems. ...We believe that research into farming methods that limit the Green House Gases that cows and other livestock emit is the key to moving forward."
Read in full See also the Lancet report which calls for a 30 per cent reduction in livestock production to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet the UK emission targets for 2030. Peter Kendall is quoted on thecattlesite.com
"... Other governments that value their livestock production are looking at exciting and innovative ways to reduce agriculture's environmental impacts while understanding the need to produce more food for an expanding global population. If the UK government wants to be seen as a leader at the climate change talks in Copenhagen they will need to work with farmers and not alienate them with soundbites."

November 26 2009 ~ EU has approved 275 million euro budget to "eradicate, control and monitor animal diseases in 2010".

"....The increased budget for 2010 is mainly due to allocations to counter Bluetongue disease in many Member States and the approval for the first time of a Bovine Tuberculosis eradication programme for UK. TB programmes are expensive and the EU will provide 12 million euros for Ireland, 10 million euros for UK and 7.5 million euros for Spain.
Within this budget, diseases that might be transmitted to humans are prioritised..." europa.eu

November 26 2009 ~ "a small figure compared with four-wheel drives..."

Aberystwyth University is exploring new animal science technologies. Professor James Newbold of the Department of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences says DEFRA has given them three quarters of a million pounds to measure and reduce emissions from ruminants. A high producing dairy cow can produce 500 litres of methane a day. But Professor Newbold says:
"A message that we want to get across is that that's a small figure compared with four-wheel drives... The other message is that this four per cent of gases is a loss to the animal. The animal loses 10 per cent of its energy a day through methane, so there's a win-win situation for the farmer. They can reduce greenhouse gases and also increase the productivity of the animal....We do have a degree of interest in developing alternative fuel sources through anaerobic digestion...I hope that we can reduce the direct emissions significantly in 10 years so that the animal isn't losing these valuable carbon and nitrogen sources "

November 26 2009 ~ "grazing cattle and sheep are the unsung heroes of the British countryside"

Last year the NBA endorsed remarks made by Alan Titchmarsh in the BBC series "The Nature of Britain", when he said,
"Even if it were possible to plough our grasslands and moorlands and grow vegan food, the carbon release would be far greater than centuries of the exhalations of cattle and sheep."
At the time, Christopher Thomas-Everard wrote:
"the vegetarian alternatives of lentils, pulses and cereals all require tractor fuel.. it takes ten units of fossil fuel energy to produce every unit of this type of food. In contrast, grass-fed UK beef involves less food miles, has higher health giving omega 3 levels, provides otherwise unobtainable forms of iron and vitamins and reduces the use of fertiliser used in farming because of the organic matter co-product (dung) cows leave behind. ..and huge environmental gains in a greater weight per square metre of earthworms for the birds and animals, like moles, shrews, and badgers, which follow where cattle graze." (See also the NBA's In defence of Cattle)
Methane emissions from slurry can be dealt with by anaerobic digestion. Mr Thomas-Everard says "the only landscape that does not produce methane is a desert." And most people would surely agree with the farmer in the November 3rd Ecologist article: "Livestock and land are linked; Grazing animals play a crucial role in maintaining Britain's pastoral landscape"

November 26 2009 ~ "the government came within a whisker of advocating bovine genocide" BBC

An article from the BBC with an oddly facetious tone, all about the government's "independent research" looking at how health professionals could help "combat the effects of climate change":
"...The boffins came up with a rather courageous idea. Why not kill 30% of Britain's cows and sheep? Not only would this help save the environment; it would also make us healthier. ... no one had bothered to tell the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and, as its name suggests, it is in charge of cows. Defra officials gently pointed out that perhaps the "kill-a-cow, save-the-world" policy might have a few flaws.
First, the farming community would be a tad unhappy..."
The BBC finds the story amusing, it seems. Its conclusion that "the left hand of this government does not always know what the right hand is doing" may strike many as less funny. The Telegraph article tells the story of the Lancet report in a very different way, quoting Alan Dangour, one of the authors of the report, who said that a dramatic change could be made without having to give up meat. The Telegraph adds that "meat production is estimated to be to blame for around 18 per cent of the gases thought to cause man-made global warming..." read in full. At least the words "estimated" and "thought to cause" are there.
(Meanwhile, even though the BBC report was needlessly dramatic, the mass killing of cows proceeds apace anyway - as a glance at the bTB page opposite will confirm. And as for hot air and greenhouse gases in the upper atmosphere, we hear that 19 UK delegates out of the 38-member team are going to the Copenhagen climate talks by air.)

November 25 2009 ~ "Does the Secretary of State share the extraordinary complacency of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change about leaked documents..

... from the Climate Research Unit which show that civil servants have been trying to avoid the Freedom of Information Act-which is potentially a criminal offence - have been conspiring to prevent publication of dissenting views, and have been modifying their own data? Would he allow such behaviour by officials on his Department's payroll?"
Peter Lilley's attempt to get the Members of the House of Commons to examine the CRU emails seriously was doomed to disappointment even in six and a half hours. John Prescott, for example, sidestepping the point about scientific integrity, attacked with ridicule,
".. There were people who still believed that the earth was flat, but the rest of us did not generally agree with them."
In spite of its length, the Commons debate yesterday on Energy and Climate Change and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs - which lasted from 3.38 pm until 10.00 pm - resumes today.

November 25 2009 ~ "for most of the time its turbines are not turning.."

Mrs. Jacqui Lait (Beckenham) (Con): " I feel desperately sorry for DEFRA, because nobody has mentioned that Department so far. It is lovely to see the Secretary of State here; he has sat patiently wondering if anyone will mention anything to do with the countryside. ... We have a wind farm on the Romney Marsh, although I am afraid that it is not taken terribly seriously because for most of the time its turbines are not turning. There is endless anecdotal evidence that wind farms have not been built quite correctly...."
Her contribution during yesterday's debate about how energy recources could be better utilised is worth reading.
On the subject of nuclear power she noted "...It does not take a great brain to work out that the consultation will not end before the general election. There is an immediate and built-in delay in the progress of national policy statements."

November 24 2009 ~MRSA - "there can be no excuse for not introducing a comprehensive UK testing programme in pigs, poultry cattle and horses,"says Soil Association

The Soil Association is clearly sceptical that MRSA has not been found in UK intensive pig farms: "the UK is the only large country in Western Europe which has refused to carry out its own national survey of pigs using nasal swabs."
"Farm-animal MRSA has developed due to the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms. It can spread from farm animals to humans, where it has already caused many life-threatening conditions including skin, blood, heart and bone infections, as well as pneumonia....MRSA testing is simple and relatively inexpensive and there can be no excuse for not introducing a comprehensive UK testing programme in pigs, poultry cattle and horses, based on the tried and tested use of nasal swabs. "
The SA gives the alarming Netherlands statistic: the proportion of human MRSA cases of farm-animal origin rose from 0% in 2002 to 40% in 2008.

November 24 2009 ~ Morrisons, Waitrose, the Co-op, M&S and Lidl praised for offering only beef of British origin - but Asda's loyalty to British beef is "abysmal"

"Asda is one of the top four retail companies in the UK but the Beef Watch survey indicates, very strongly, that its loyalty towards British beef is abysmal - which by our reckoning makes it a core threat to the future of the UK industry," explains the NBA's director, Kim Haywood today.

November 24 2009 ~ More heated comment on the CRU emails

The hacked emails is an issue that will not die down. George Monbiot in the Guardian yesterday says,
"It's no use pretending that this isn't a major blow. The emails extracted by a hacker from the climatic research unit at the University of East Anglia could scarcely be more damaging. I am now convinced that they are genuine, and I'm dismayed and deeply shaken by them."
The latest edition of the Wall Street Journal carries two articles. In Climate Emails Stoke Debate an email from Professor Phil Jones is quoted in which he says that any research by sceptics was unwelcome: We
"will keep them out somehow -- even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!"
In Global Warming With the Lid Off Phil Jones' email of 2005, apparently to Michael Mann which, says the Wall Street Journal, refers "almost certainly Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick, two Canadians who have devoted years to seeking the raw data and codes used in climate graphs and models, then fact-checking the published conclusions.." Prof Jones' email reads:
"The two MMs have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear there is a Freedom of Information Act now in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rather than send to anyone. . . . We also have a data protection act, which I will hide behind.."
Meanwhiloe, Paul Hudson, whose article caused such outrage to those utterly certain of anthropogenic warming, (see below) says that on the 12th October he was sent " comments from some of the worlds leading climate scientists written as a direct result of my article 'whatever happened to global warming'. .The e-mails released on the internet as a result of CRU being hacked into are identical.."

November 23 2009 ~ The hacked emails scandal - it's like being hit on the head with a hockey stick.

In the flurry of damage limitation exercises following disappearance of data and emails from the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit - and the reluctance of mainstream papers to say very much about it, it is refreshing to come across a website that has some valid and interesting thought-provoking things to say. William M. Briggs has a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics from Cornell University, and is now a statistician and consultant in New York City. "Too many people are too certain of too many things," he says in his latest blog posting - one that very clearly explains to the baffled layman the nature of the CRU proxies - and why
"All those squiggly-line plots should (ethically) also contain an indication of the error of the lines. Some kind of plus/minus should always be there..."
He gives a list of
" all the sources of error, variability, and uncertainty and whether those sources - as far as I can see: which means I might be wrong, but willing to be corrected - are properly accounted for by the CRU crew, and its likely effects on the certainty we have in proxy reconstructions.."
And what he finds is that out of at least 9 "potential sources of uncertainty (I've no doubt forgotten something)" only one is accounted for in the CRU's interpreting of results. As a scientist himself, Mr Briggs is perhaps more sympathetic to Professor Jones and his team than many bloggers - but he says rather devastatingly:
"we see that the CRU crew define a "good scientist" as one who agrees with them, a "bad scientist" or "no scientist" as one who does not agree with them, and a "mediocre scientist" as somebody who mostly agrees with them. Further, these judgments are carried to the peer-review process..."
Sceptics have been rounded on because of a perceived lack of peer review. Peer reviewed, he suggests, is implicitly defined as "that process which publishes only those views that agree with prior convictions." After climategate," says William Briggs in Climategate Peer Review: Science red in tooth and claw, "all can see that this line of logic is as effective as a paper sword."

November 23 2009 ~ "stakeholders need to be better integrated into decision-making..."

Yet again we see that top down policy making, leaving out those on the ground, can be deplorably counter productive. The aims of the so-called "Second Pillar" of the Common Agricultural Policy sound admirable:
"Improving the competitiveness of the agricultural and forestry sector, Modernization of agricultural holdings, Improving the environment and the countryside, Improving the quality of life in rural areas and encouraging diversification of the rural economy ..."
However, such aims are not the same as achievements. BirdLife's findings in "Could do Better: How Is EU Rural Development Policy Delivering for Biodiversity?" looks critically at the overall effectiveness of second pillar measures for protecting biodiversity (Examples given include the effects of EU subsidies for the restoration and expansion of drainage in the very places where wetlands fulfil multiple ecological functions - while in Portugal the EU is subsidising the expansion of irrigation - destroying EU priority steppe habitats. Its policy is removing long-standing networks of ditches in Finland while in Spain important nesting sites for endangered species are being destroyed with new building.)
Birdlife's paper is one of the resources to be found at www.reformthecap.eu - a new website for all those interested in CAP reform. The aim is to foster a better understanding of what is at stake and how to shape the future CAP. See link also in left margin.

November 20 - 23 ~ France's Supreme Court confirms that Monsanto did not tell the truth

The judgement concerns Round-up and Monsanto's appeal against the 2007 conviction. See GM page. More and more weeds are becoming resistant to Roundup and its ilk. "Never fear," says the Huffington Post, "the biotech industry has "killer" solutions to the Roundup-resistant weed epidemic - you guessed it, new crops resistant to different and multiple herbicides. Dr. Benbrook describes these "next-generation" GE crops, which are the true pesticide-promoting future of agricultural biotechnology..."

20 - 23 November 2009 ~ "a fratricidal race to the bottom" Fairtrade farmers of the Windward Islands appeal to Peter Mandleson for an Ombudsman

Small farmers in the Windward Islands grow and export bananas for UK consumers. Their organisation, WINFA, (see letter) is registered with Fairtrade - but the role of bananas in the supermarket rivalry wars is forcing prices paid to the farmers downwards - just at the very time that production costs are escalating. They too are urging the establishment of a grocery Ombudsman - "in the fine traditions of British and international standards." (See also Ombudsman page)

20 - 23 November 2009 ~ "Wind power will make Britain the dirty old man of Europe"

says Charles Moore in the Telegraph: "The wind bloweth where it listeth - but thou canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. So thou canst not rely on it to put thy light on when thou flickest the switch..." He considers that if we go ahead with giant turbines - "huge beasts, the technological equivalent of the dinosaurs, will plant their feet all over our remotest regions. Also like the dinosaurs, they will fascinate future generations, by their weird size, and by the fact that they have become extinct....wiithin a few years, we shall have to seek EU derogations to allow our old coal-fired stations to stay open longer, just to keep the lights on..." Wind power page

20 - 23 November 2009 ~ H1N1 mutation is causing interest

While complacency about H1N1 seems widespread and many in the EU seem apathetic about getting vaccinated, a mutation detected in Norway and Ukraine has caused enough interest to produce another Briefing Note from the World Health Organisation. More on H1N1 page

20 - 23 November 2009 ~ "The priority is to recognise the illness and stop further exposure to OPs and other toxic chemicals.."

There is still no official recognition of the chronic central and autonomic nervous system effects of organophosphates. When the government made sheep dipping in organo-phosphates compulsory, as it was until in 1992, there cannot have been any idea that the health repercussions would be so grave or so long lasting - but so it has proved. The 1951 Zuckerman Report, which warned of the dangers, was apparently lying unnoticed, filed away in the House of Commons library.
The final paragraphs of Organophosphate Poisoning - symptoms and treatment, at www.drmyhill.co.uk:
"The OP afflicted farmer is left to sort out his life as best as he can and usually ends up with declining health, having to sell his farm or rent out his fields. His marriage usually flounders because he can't pull his weight. No wonder that a significant proportion commit suicide...the lack of street credibility and help from Government Agencies make this illness a social and financial disaster area."
Two studies have at last been published online by DEFRA (the Survey of Health and Pesticide Exposure (SHAPE), led by Tony Fletcher of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Study of Health in Agricultural Workers (SHAW). (Both needed extreme persistence in tracking down)
Dr Sarah MacKenzie-Ross's recent paper, (see the Farmers Guardian May 15 and a description of the study on www.sarahmackenzieross.com) warns, as she says:
" ... that there might be a slow cumulative effect on people. We have got no idea how many people out there are suffering. .. We think it is more dangerous than previously thought. Defra's advice should stress OPs should be a last resort and that other chemicals can be used."

20 - 23 November 2009 ~ "we were led to believe that OPs were safe if used as instructed.." Countess of Mar.

At the start of the House of Lords debate on organophosphates in June this year, the Countess of Mar said:
"...I cannot express adequately the effect that the somewhat apathetic attitude of those who are responsible for ensuring our health and safety over the past 20 years has had....My own experience has taught me that there is an almost total lack of understanding of the life-threatening heart and lung function damage and of the effects of administering drugs that act on the acetylcholine system. ..."
Lord Rooker's reply was admirable and well worth reading especially on how he regarded Richard Carden and the Civil Service of happier times. He spoke of there being a "reluctance to investigate".
Lord Tyler said,
"Sheep farmers had to use OPs - twice a year, under the original arrangements. The Government, as well as those responsible for manufacture, had not just a moral but a legal responsibility for the use of organophosphates.
Interestingly, when Lord Livsey of Talgarth asked
whether " the Minister can assure us that as regards the inordinate delay that has occurred - literally thousands of sheep farmers in the UK are medically proven to be affected by this issue - his department and other government departments have not been put upon by the Treasury not to accept any liability or proof whatever that OP has the effect which many medical practitioners accept is the cause of the terrible condition from which many of these people suffer?"
Lord Davies' answer can hardly be thought to have given any such assurance.
An OP page has now been started on this website in the hope that it will provide information and links for those interested in seeing the interdepartmental Carden Committee reconstituted.

20 - 23 November 2009 ~ Do we really want to host Olympic meals of factory farmed chicken?

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall:"It is totally inconsistent and I think inconceivable that we could be watching sports people at their peak of fitness, yet being served chicken by the Olympic Games catering service that not only has an arguably lower nutritional value, but has been produced in a system that causes lameness in over a quarter of the birds. I believe that the 2012 Olympics has a role to play in showing leadership and responsibility in this issue."
Compassion in World Farming suggests one sends an urgent email. If you use their standard letter (link mended) this takes about 10 seconds.

November 20 2009 ~ Cockermouth flood misery

The Independent quotes one resident: "...four feet of water outside my front door. The amount of rain has been staggering. It's desperate. The town centre is completely flooded, the only people out there at the moment are the emergency services. The water is up to the waists of the firefighters." There is no mention of the plight of farm animals in Cumbria.
See also Google News media reports.

November 20 2009 ~ Cost sharing - looks set to be introduced before the next General Election

A DEFRA spokesman is quoted in the Yorkshire Post :
"The Government is looking to develop appropriate mechanisms which will focus on behavioural change and will also help share the responsibilities and costs between Government and the farming industry for animal disease control."
Behavioural change on the part of whom was not specified. More on this issue here.

November 20 2009 ~ DEFRA's respect dials and baskets of indicators

A reader has alerted us, via FoodEast's excellent website www.foodeast.com/news/newsarchive/sd%20action%20plan.pdf, to the paragraph below. A beacon of pompous obfuscation, we feel it deserves some kind of award. (One remembers with nostalgia Clive James' creation, the Tin Bum of Rangoon..)

2.9 A Respected Department

Effective delivery of our Departmental Strategic Objective (DSO) to champion sustainable development means leading by example, and being a respected Department. Our reputation is built up over time by doing our core business well: by delivering the desired policy outcomes within our DSOs. Therefore, all of the good work done in the other DSOs (including how their delivery is framed within the principles of sustainable development) should contribute to turning our "respect" dials positive over time. Progress against this DSO is reported quarterly to Defra's Management Board.

As another emailer remarks drily, "Without any irony it could be set as an A level question, under the simple heading 'discuss'..." or, as Lord Vetinari says to a similar group in Pratchett's novel, Going Postal ,"What do you think you are doing, gentlemen?"

November 19 2009 ~ SDAP - aka DEFRA's new sustainable development action plan - who is it aimed at?

Beneath the somewhat baffling urban cover picture with its skyscrapers and concentric circles, DEFRA's introduction to its "SDAP" tells us that "Sustainable development is the only way that we can deal with the crisis of sustainability and build a UK that will flourish in the world of tomorrow."
Some may feel the UK's ability to flourish in the world of tomorrow will depend in part on its ability to cope adequately with animal disease:
"A key strand of our work on farming, in partnership with key delivery partners such as Animal Health or the Veterinary Laboratories Agency, centres around animal diseases and their impact on the farming sector. The two biggest areas of Defra.s investment on endemic disease are on Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies (TSEs), including Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) an action on which is included below, and tuberculosis."
Alas, this is the sole mention of bTB in the entire 55 page document - which can hardly be aimed at anyone not skilled in deciphering the Department's jargon. Surely Civil Service documents a decade ago had more straightforward substance, did not try so hard to justify their existence ("our new Departmental Strategic Objective (DSO) - as above -reflects our ambitions to ensure that we achieve sustainable, secure and healthy food supplies..") or leave readers wondering what on earth it all means. How is this for clarity?:
"Defra's role is to promote the inclusion of rural interests within mainstream government policy-making and delivery in a way that is both itself sustainable in policy terms and leads to sustainable outcomes, and to maintain an overview of a basket of national indicators in order to determine whether there are any systemic problems resulting from geography/rurality."
There are undoubtedly some really worthwhile intentions here - but a version of the plan for English speakers would useful.

November 19 2009 ~ "A single meeting can't solve world hunger, but we certainly expected far more than this,"

The absence of rich country leaders - apart from the Chair, Silvio Berlesconi - made for a disappointing Food Summit in Rome. The director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, Jacques Diouf , says the FAO summit "didn't go as far" as he had hoped, wondering how world powers could commit so much money to fighting the financial crisis and not to finding resources for feeding the 1 billion hungry and he was disappointed that the final declaration to increase aid "does not contain any quantified objectives, nor any precise deadline."
Oxfam has called the FAO conference "lacklustre", offering what it called only "crumbs" for the world's hungry. But - as with so many issues that this website looks at - it is action from below, without the constraints of big business, bureaucracy or political agenda, that seems to produce results. Colin Tudge's view in a New Stateman article seems as relevant as ever:
"... In the short term, the prime task for the world as a whole, and in Africa in particular, must be to build on traditional agriculture, which alone can maintain landscapes and provide good jobs for the billions who need them: with appropriate-tech, small-scale financial support, and the general ambition not to trash small farms, but to make agrarian life tolerable, and indeed positively agreeable and desirable. Yet most of what seems to be on the agendas even of the best-intentioned seems to be going in different directions altogether."

November 19 2009 ~ The relationship between science and Whitehall

The principles that should apply to government use of science advice should, according to a statement from Senior scientists and scientific advisers issued on November 6th, comprise: academic freedom, independence of operation and proper consideration of advice. (more detail)
On Tuesday, Lord Drayson and Professor Beddington started a consultation (pdf) on the matter.

November 18 2009 ~ "This is not right morally and ethically, because welfare is at stake..."

The slightly amended report from the ELA representatives at the Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law Veterinary Association (AWSELVA) Autumn Meeting on November 10th - The Impact of Policy Changes on Animal Welfare - can now be found here, a very readable report of an important meeting. Extract:
"...should welfare be an animal or human centred approach? Most public communications with Defra concern welfare and it is clear that "mapping the landscape around the risk" must take account of public perception as well as scientific evidence. It was perhaps unfortunate that the example provided for contingency planning for emergency response concerned the efficient killing of large numbers of poultry. Public perception of mass slaughter, however humanely performed, is unlikely to generate too many favourable headlines for animal welfare policies....
... the near hopeless situation of many UK sheep farmers as profit margins continue to fall. ... Do policy makers understand what they are putting in jeopardy by increasing costs for flock keepers and keeping the prices for sheep products low? It is more and more difficult to have enough good shepherds per flock - the ratio can be one person per 1000 breeding ewes, rising at lambing time to more than 3000 individual animals per person. This is not right morally and ethically, because welfare is at stake.. ."
Read in full

November 18 2009 ~ Sir Roy Anderson to quit as Rector of Imperial College

After barely over a year in the post and expressing a wish to spend more time on research, Professor Anderson, well known to regular readers as one of the main forces behind the mass killing of farm animals in 2001, is leaving his position as Rector at IC and returning to his research group at Imperial. IC's student news website quotes Dr Michael McGarvey of Imperial's Molecular Virology Division of Medicine: "We hope that Sir Roy Anderson's replacement will take the opportunity of coming to a new role to look again at plans for serious and damaging cuts in the Faculty of Medicine. Imperial, justifiably, has a strong and proud international reputation in medicine and it should not be put at risk by these cuts".

November 18 2009 ~ "So many constraints" prevent countries from fighting hunger

In the AFP report about the World Summit on Food Security in Rome, Ambroise Mazal, from the French non-governmental organisation CCFD-Terre, cites the case of Malawi which, (as we heard on the BBC's PM programme on Monday), has successfully - but against the wishes of the WTO, which withdrew financing - introduced a system of subsidies to smallholder farmers. It has made a huge difference to households. Malawi no longer imports its staple crop maize but actually exports its excess. As Mazal comments:
"On one hand, there is the FAO which urges the protection of markets and aid to smallholder farmers, on the other there is the WTO (World Trade Organisation) which urges competition and the opening up of markets "
In a 2008 interview in Hungary, Patrick Mulvany, whose work focuses on food sovereignty and the related issues of the governance of agriculture, biodiversity and technology, said of the WTO:
"...It has been part of the globalisation, the liberalisation of markets, project to ensure that trade increased, that local control of agriculture and food production diminished, that stocks were run down..
.....what has been promoted, with the blessing and pushing of transnational corporations in these food summits and in the press, in the media every day, is an increase in input of fertilizers, of pesticides, a simplification of the production system, using fewer genes, mostly genetically modified, to have their way to a high input low diversity system....the alternative is essentially food sovereignty... localising food systems.. enabling people to take more control...working with nature rather than against nature; of developing local knowledge and skills, localising markets. "
The interview is well worth reading in full. (See also Food Security page)

November 18 2009 ~ Cost sharing - "we have to keep our guard up on this issue - its not gone away.."

We are very grateful to have just received the following message:
"There are some rumours/stories in the press that the Government have shelved plans for Cost Sharing for Animal Health. I'm afraid to say that this is just not the case.... It now looks as if DEFRA will publish the draft bill early in 2010 so it has definitely not gone away ."
(More detail on the Cost Sharing page)

November 17 2009 ~The Impact of Policy Changes on Animal Welfare

An important meeting of the Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law Veterinary Association policy took place London on November 10th in which the concept of "animal welfare" was examined, particularly in the context of the development and influencing of policy. The European Livestock Association (the association to which we belong) was represented at the meeting. A slightly amended version of the report now appears here.
(It may strike readers that what emerged most forcefully from the meeting was how vitally important it is for those concerned about animal welfare and health to get involved early on. Taking responsibility from the grass roots up to influence policy in its early stages to make proper provision for welfare is essential. Recent history teaches us how difficult it is to be heard by officialdom once policy is set and official minds made up - even when some attempt is made by the conscientious to engage with "stakeholders".)

November 17 2009 ~ "...rather like beaching the Titanic before it reached the iceberg"

It looks as though the government has decided to postpone the unpopular cost sharing scheme for now. More on cost-sharing page.

November 17 2009 ~ FMD "2001 forced a global rethink about how to best deal with the disease.."

Today's countrynews.com.au story about Victoria's trial last week of the "vaccinate to live" policy for Foot and Mouth in Australia might make readers want to cheer aloud. For the first time in Australia, last week's exercise tested "vaccinating to live", a strategy to avoid pre-emptive slaughtering of animals.
"..to keep animals alive that may have previously tested positive as a result of vaccination.."
("DIVA '09" refers to the DIVA test to distinguish between positive test results found in infected and vaccinated animals developed by Australia's Janine Muller last year, described here in 2008 as "inexpensive" and not requiring infectious virus to produce the reagents. ) In Australia, Victoria's DPI (Department of Primary Industries) chief veterinary officer, Hugh Millar, says that the devastating impact of the FMD outbreak in the UK during 2001 forced a global rethink about how to best deal with the disease.
"In the UK the outbreak dragged on for 36 weeks at a total economic cost of US$10 billion. In total, more than 5.7 million animals were slaughtered. In contrast, Uruguay, with similar stock numbers, embarked on a mass vaccination program and was able to halt their FMD outbreak in 18 weeks, with less than 7000 animals slaughtered, for an economic loss estimated at US$400 million."
(In fact Dr Millar underestimated by nearly 5 million the number in total of animals killed as a result of the UK's policy - closer to 11 million was the estimate given by the UK's Meat and Livestock Commission noting that four million lambs were slaughtered but not counted. And the official toll of 595,000 cattle did not include 100,000 calves and the 50,000 calves close to birth in the womb that were killed with their mothers. The conditions under which much slaughter took place caused widespread distress - some of which we catalogued at the time. See also our pages on Uruguay 2001 and most recentFMD page)
More detail at new.dpi.vic.gov.au.

November 17 2009 ~ "With glyphosate-resistant weeds now infesting millions of acres, farmers face rising costs coupled with sometimes major yield losses, and the environmental impact of weed management systems will surely rise..."

Reuters today quotes Charles Benbrook, chief scientist of The Organic Center on the report released by the nonprofit organisations The Organic Center (TOC), the Union for Concerned Scientists (UCS) and the Center for Food Safety (CFS)
"The groups additionally criticized the agricultural biotechnology industry for claiming that higher costs for genetically engineered seeds are justified by multiple benefits to farmers, including decreased spending on pesticides. The group said biotech corn seed prices in 2010 could be almost three times the cost of conventional seed, while new enhanced biotech soybean seed for 2010 could be 42 percent more than the original biotech version."
Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety said, "This report confirms what we've been saying for years. The most common type of genetically engineered crops promotes increased use of pesticides, an epidemic of resistant weeds, and more chemical residues in our foods. This may be profitable for the biotech/pesticide companies, but it's bad news for farmers, human health and the environment." Read in full

November 16 2009 ~ "they don't really put food, and human beings, and the fabric of the Earth itself, at the top of their agenda."

Today is World Food Day. FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf says, "The silent hunger crisis - affecting one sixth of all of humanity - poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world... The global food insecurity situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat for humanity.."
The much respected Colin Tudge, author of books such as "Feeding people is Easy" which concludes we can, without cruelty to livestock and without wrecking the rest of the world, feed everyone, runs a down-to-earth and very readable blog called Campaign for Real Farming.
The entry on DEFRA's Food Policy Unit Campaign in August, for example, is generous to DEFRA's intentions but points out the fundamental flaw
"...Defra and the British government in general will never solve the world's food problems -- because they don't really put food, and human beings, and the fabric of the Earth itself, at the top of their agenda. For governments, the economic dogma comes first... ...The principles of biology tell us what it is possible to do; and the agreed principles of morality tell us what we ought to do: what it is right to do..."
The entry is well worth reading in full.

November 16 2009 ~ "we must nourish the indigenous agriculture and build on it. Absolutely not, as now, should we contrive to sweep it aside in favour of western agroindustry"

Colin Tudge's most recent entry concerns Bob Orskov of the Macaulay Institute, Aberdeen, an honorary professor of Aberdeen University, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, who travels to many parts of the world trying to assist in rural development. He also happens to be one of the world's leading animal nutritionists.
"Above all," says Tudge," he retains enormous respect for peasant farmers. if we seriously want to feed everybody well and forever and create societies that are truly tolerable to live in, then we must nourish the indigenous agriculture and build on it. Absolutely not, as now, should we contrive to sweep it aside in favour of western agroindustry. Science has many a crucial role to play in this -- not to replace what's there, but to enhance it..."
Here (in a brief and impressive 8 page pdf file - or see html alternative) he explains how and why. Many of the speeches likely to be heard in Rome in the next two days will, of course, be well intentioned, even passionate - but somehow, the simple humanity of Bob Orskov's summary seems so much more obvious quiet good sense.

November 16 2009 ~ Ukraine: ".. still unclear to what extent pandemic (H1N1) virus infection is responsible for this situation," says ProMed

While today's Express seems shamelessly to exploit the situation by talking of "a deadly plague" that could "sweep across Europe" and "a state of panic", the ProMed moderator on Friday said,
"...numbers from official and semi-official sources in the Lviv region of Ukraine are confusing. Undoubtedly there has been a large number of people in the Lviv region of Ukraine affected by unspecified flu or acute respiratory infections, and a large number of fatalities. It is still unclear to what extent pandemic (H1N1) virus infection is responsible for this situation."
Scientists at the Medical Research Council laboratories at Mill Hill are still testing samples from Ukraine to identify the pathogen and see if there is a mutated strain of influenza. (ProMed may be thought a more reliable source for accurate information than the Express or the Mail.)

November 15 2009 ~ 'urgent' review of impact of oil shortages is called for by UK industry

We read in the Observer that the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security, which includes such firms as Virgin, Stagecoach and Yahoo, has called on the government 'urgently' to "reassess its dismissive view about the potential threat and impact of oil shortages." The article also refers to "a growing number of reports that indicate the situation is more urgent than many believed". The Wicks Review on behalf of the Department of Energy and Climate Change into energy issues in August was dismissive of peak oil concerns.
Observer extract:
"....The debate was enlivened last Friday when Swedish academics...came to even more gloomy assumptions. ...John Hess, the founder and chairman of the Hess Corporation, the US oil company, told a conference in London last month that a "devastating oil crisis" loomed on the horizon if global action was not taken quickly..."
Read article

November 15 2009 ~ Gulliver Visits Milibandia

Professor Stott's parody of Gulliver's Travels leaves poor Gulliver with the heaviest of hearts. Extract:
"But why do you not go back to your older and better ways?"
"Our Great Leaders, The Grodonbrun and Decameron, prevent it, Sir. They tax us even more heavily if we seek to use aught but wind - and straw for our little homes. Sir, I beg you not to stay or to tarry. They are surely mad, for they believe that they can rule the wind and the weather. You should go and use the wind at sea for sail, and not partake of our toil on land. Sail at once, Sir, for, if the Milibandians come, they will surely set you to the poles for ever and a day..."
Clamour of the Times

November 14/15 2009 ~ The Q fever organism is so infectious to work with in the laboratory that it is only cultured in very high containment facilities - "They really have a problem..."

The virologist, Dr Ruth Watkins, writes on the subject of the connection between intensive farming and pathogens such as the Q fever bacterium:
"....I am glad you have drawn attention to Q fever in the Netherlands. It has developed into the current epidemic because of intensive goat farming systems where animals do not go outside but live their whole lives in a shed in large numbers to provide a milking business. ...Those farms where infection has occurred in the Netherlands will be heavily contaminated with Q fever and a source for years to come. It is not only humans that are susceptible (one organism inhaled can cause infection) but also other domestic animals such as sheep, cattle, dogs and cats. ......
The numbers of reported human cases in the Netherlands are bound to be an underestimate. ... if vaccination of goats is the only measure taken the infection will continue to spread ...It may already be quite widespread in other domesticated animals where it may be sustained and continue to be a significant source of infection.... There is a lot to be said for allowing animals natural living conditions. .."
Read today's email in full and see below

November 14/15 2009 ~ "That could not possibly be what is happening this time. Could it?"

Geoffrey Lean in today's Telegraph notes that tomorrow, the Foods Standards Agency (the same quango as he reminds us, " that constantly condemns the organic produce that people really do want") is going to announce who is on a steering group to "include stakeholders ... with different views of GM" - and only two of the 11 to be named are known to oppose the technology.
He remembers how six years ago there was a similar public "debate",
"whose purpose - one senior official told me - was to "dispel the myths" put about by "extremists in environmental groups"
In fact although the exercise hoped to reverse public opinion that was running at three-to-one against GM, by the time it had finished, "opposition among those who participated had soared to 90 per cent, with the uncommitted becoming increasingly hostile the more they learned about GM." Read article in full - ( And note warmwell GM page)

November 14 2009 ~ "only two in five people in Britain accept as an established scientific fact that global warming is largely man-made.."

Peter Riddell and Ben Webster in the Times today quote Mike Childs, head of climate change at Friends of the Earth who considers there has been "disproportionate media coverage of the view of scientists who challenged the link between climate change and human activity".
Surely something of a bizarre statement. We watch the media on this issue very carefully and it would appear that opposition to the received wisdom on "global warming" is given very short shrift by most mainstream news. For example, we have yet to see the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change, mentioned by anyone of note except Christopher Booker (here.) Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, was astonished to find that not one of the IPCC's 22 contributing authors on sea levels was a sea level specialist - and the reason, says Booker, why he
" is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on "going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world"
Such popular scepticism deplored in the Times article may indeed be inconvenient for some. However, it's hard not to suspect that if the science really were both wholly convincing and transparent as the article seems to suggest, there would not be widespread scepticism. The theory of morphic resonance may have something in it after all. According to the poll, voters are "not yet convinced of the need for significant sacrifices and will resist new green taxes" but 87 per cent support new building regulations for all new houses to meet the highest standards of insulation by making more use of renewal energy such as solar power, even if this increases the cost of new homes." The majority of comments under the Times article are well worth looking at.

November 14 2009 ~ The zoonosis, Q fever, in the Netherlands has affected 2200 people so far this year - at least 6 fatally.

The Netherlands is suffering from the largest Q fever epidemic ever reported globally and new measures were recently decided upon by the Ministry.
Q ("Query") fever provides a good example of where animal and human health policies need to work closely together and be aware of the other's difficulties. The Royal Dutch Veterinary Society (KNMvD) in a recent newsletter: (See ProMed posting 20091004.3452)
"Ministers Klink [public health] and Verburg [agriculture] intend to reduce the number of human cases by these measures, but they warn against excessive optimism in the short term: a reduction in the number of Q-fever patients is not expected in 2010, at most, stabilization is expected. This is related to the fact that the animal vaccine, while in state to prevent mass abortions on the animal holdings, thus eliminating a significant source of infection, is not capable of suppressing the disease altogether. Another point of significance is the fact that the Q fever bacterium will survive in the environment among dust particles."
Interestingly, the moderator adds that the Society "encouraged practitioners to stimulate their client-farmers to report even sporadic abortions" in sheep and goats - adding significantly
"Obviously, such stimulation is not sufficient if farmers fear resulting repercussions."
In other words, farmers cannot be expected to go to great lengths to bring about difficulties for themselves - unless their public spirited behaviour is recognised and to some extent rewarded.
The ProMed moderator (AS) said in October (here) , "Various aspects of this outbreak remain enigmatic, in particular its epidemiology within the animal population, the interface with humans, its dimensions and the role of climate/weather conditions.."

November 14 2009 ~ How serious is Q fever?

It is caused by the bacterium Coxiella burnetii and can cause abortion in animals. Humans can be infected by close contact with infected livestock, especially during lambing, but the bacterium can also travel some distance in the air.
We read on ProMed today that 2200 people in the Netherlands have contracted Q fever so far in 2009 and human Q fever cases are no longer entirely restricted to the southern vaccination areas (map.pdf). At least 6 people have died. The disease has spread across a third of the country and it seems that there is concern that it might be causing premature births in humans. It may be remembered that during the foot and mouth mass animal killings of 2001 several emergency cull workers in Britain contracted the disease. It can cause flu-like symptoms and at worst can lead to pneumonia - even to death.

November 14 ~ Huge wind farm in New Zealand turned down because fears of dangerous man-made global warming were not supported by the evidence and there were no grounds to build it to "fight climate change".

The 350 page judgement was delivered after nine months of deliberation by the Court. For New Zealand at least, this decision may well impact on all other wind farm proposals. More detail on windfarm page.

November 13/14 2009 ~ "I'd say, cut development and running costs by venting CO2 into the atmosphere, but offset with a programme of subsidized home improvements to reduce CO2 elsewhere..."

The Telegraph blogger "Sciencebod" today is prepared to make some provocative statements that do entertainingly puncture the balloon of illogicality in current political policy.
"....last week we've been told there's to be a levy on our energy bills to pay for "clean carbon technology". Clean carbon? Wot, finding places we can squirrel away CO2 for a few decades (hopefully) in order to meet carbon-undertakings entered into lightly? (No country with a trillion pound national debt, rising by the minute, should be making such commitments)
...if it's a mixed bag of energy we seek, then why no Govt campaign to cut our domestic bills, by installing heat pumps, thermal or PV panels etc?
Why so little publicity to the available grants for renewable energy?...
We are fighting for our economic survival goddamit! " Read in full
As we say below, whatever may be the truth about the need to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, it is hardly surprising that voices are raised to say the truly vast amounts of money being spent would be far better used on making sure household energy efficiency is improved.

November 12 2009 ~ CO2 emissions: "the scientists 'frightening people witless by following the party line' are motivated by politics and research funding. .."

So says Professor Ian Plimer, quoted in the Telegraph, who says we have had huge climate change in the past and that human activity is not responsible for the "very slight variations" we measure today. To those who insist on the idea that CO2 emissions must be curbed at any price, he points out that we cannot stop carbon emissions "because most of them come from volcanoes"
If Ian Plimer is right - and those who have not studied climate science can only trust those they feel are worthy of trust - then the billions spent, the now almost religious fervour and the perhaps illusory technologies may well be the result of mere greed for research funding and political kudos.
For balance, the Telegraph also quotes Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice at the Met Office. But when she claims that ".. it is widely accepted that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has doubled in the last 200 years and as a result the globe is warming" this somehow lacks the fearlessness of someone prepared to question the current dogma from a position of knowledge.
(Meanwhile, in addition to offering "burseries", local financial incentives and "presentations" to schools and local groups, those who want to erect 20 giant turbines inside the Forest of Bowland Area of Natural Beauty (see wind power page) cite it as "an important step in the fight to tackle climate change and to help Lancashire and the North West meet its renewable energy and carbon emissions targets.")
UPDATE Nov 13 Interestingly, Ian Plimer and George Monbiot were to have met in London to debate climate change on 12 November. The debate did not happen, and the exchange of emails between the two men last week is worrying.

November 11 2009 ~ "What is wrong with intensive farming?"

Patrick Holden talking effectvely in this brief video about the present agricultural crisis caused by what he sees as "the treadmill of intensification", the abandonment of crop rotation, increasing dependence on antibiotics, the resultant profound changes in livestock and landscapes - and how nitrogen fertiliser depresses the ability of plants to nourish themselves- leading to all the attendant problems that, treated with ultimately unhelpful solutions, have led to yet more concerns. The video presentation at www.bigpicture.tv is well worth watching. He mentions Sir Albert Howard, one of our own greatest heroes, who inspired the Soil Association, and who memorably said "the health of soil, plant, animal and man is one and indivisible." In 2001, when FMD was causing such grief and anxiety, Patrick Holden quoted Sir Albert Howard whose own animals in 1920s India had been nose to nose with FMD infected animals but remained healthy (more detail) :
".... experience convinced me that foot and mouth disease is a consequence of malnutrition pure and simple and that the remedies that have been devised in countries like Great Britain to deal with the trouble, namely, the slaughter of the affected animals, is both superficial and also inadmissible. Such attempts to control an outbreak should cease. Cases of foot and mouth disease should be used to tune up practice and to see to it that the animals are fed on the fresh produce of fertile soil. The trouble will then pass and not spread to the surrounding areas providing the animals there are also in good fettle....."
The article in the Ecologist should be of interest to anyone with an interest in agriculture and animal health.

November 11 2009 ~ " We will find out who is right about peak oil before the decade is out..." Jeremy Leggett

This year's Petroleum Geology Conference in London included a topical debate over the timing of peak oil & gas. BP chief geologist David Jenkins argued for the motion that peak oil is "no longer a concern," and Jeremy Leggett argued against, incorporating the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security conclusions into his case. Of approximately five hundred oil-industry geologists, only about a third voted in favour of the motion "Peak oil is no longer a concern." The Oil Drum's subsequent interview with Jeremy Leggett is fascinating. Extract:
"...I knew that a few geologists had been saying, since the mid 1990s, that the peak of production would come all too soon. The dean of the early peak oil camp is Colin Campbell, a geologist like me trained by legendary stratigrapher Stuart McKerrow at Oxford. I always assumed - simply assumed, I'm ashamed to say - that Colin was wrong. My response, I now see, was a cultural knee-jerk. So I checked out what was going on. I finally did some homework. And so my peak oil moment came, belatedly.... We will find out who is right about peak oil before the decade is out - earlier, rather than later. The discontinuities will be seismic. My preferred scenario is this one. Within just a couple of decades, the world will be floating on a sea of cleantech energy technologies, and enjoying a renaissance built around the many social value-adders inherent in those technologies. Oil shocks, oil wars, and all the other dismal paraphernalia of the hydrocarbon age will seem so very ....twentieth century...."
Read in full

November 10/11 2009 ~ " .. full cost recovery has been put back on the table ahead of necessary further reforms to the MHS."

The implications of removing the subsidy for meat hygiene inspections are serious, especially at a time when UK livestock farmers are still reeling from losses caused by imposed EU regulations, low prices from supermarkets and cheap competition from abroad where concern for animal welfare can be so poor. See Farmers Guardian. report on the Food Standards Agency's plans to pass on the full cost of meat hygiene inspections to livestock farmers.

November 10/11 2009 ~"If we can get this together from the ground up, then politicians and supermarkets will come on board from the top down."

Many issues of interest to warmwell.com were mentioned by Patrick Holden last night in St Helier. A summary of his talk has appeared at j-can.org.je. and is worth reading in full
"....Rob Hopkins is the co-founder of the Transition Network2) and he has inspired Patrick Holden to see that we are not just living off the 'fat of the land', but actually the fat of the cleared rainforests of Borneo, South America and elsewhere....we are using up in each crop thousands of years of ecological capital... we are simultaneously using up millions of years of earth capital, geological capital, in the same short time. ... Peak oil has been predicted for decades and is probably upon us about now..... Patrick Holden was able to say that ... without the umbilical supplies of oils, electricity, special seeds, special straw, soya and palm oil that fed his farm... he was able to begin to rebuild the skills and the social capital that allows us to live off our land, not off the fat of the cleared rainforests and the dwindling oil wells.
.... Professor John Beddington says ....we will face a 'perfect storm' as "food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions"....We must build resilience into the farming system, lessen our reliance on imports and other dependencies and so be prepared for the future..."
Read in full

November 10 2009 ~Many big supermarkets could miss the deadline on the new Supply Code

The existing Supermarkets Code of Practice is to be replaced by a new Grocery Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP) in February.
According to supermarket industry insiders and Saturday's Telegraph,the UK'S second-tier supermarkets (Iceland, Lidl, Aldi, the Co-op, Marks & Spencer and Waitrose) have just 12 weeks to meet the Competition Commission's February deadline to alter the way that they deal with suppliers. Certain practices - such as supermarkets altering supply terms retrospectively or asking suppliers to fund promotions - will be outlawed. Supermarkets will now have to keep written records of all negotiations with suppliers, alter some existing supplier agreements in order to meet the new regulations, retrain all their buying teams and appoint an in-house compliance officer.
While Waitrose and M&S are reported to be well advanced in their preparations for GSCOP others have "vastly underestimated how much work needs to be done".
When in August this year the Competition Commission (CC) formally recommended to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills that it should establish an Ombudsman, the idea was that such a figure could arbitrate in disputes between grocery retailers and suppliers and investigate complaints under the new Code of Practice. It may be thought unfortunate that the decision has been delayed. See Ombudsman page.
(For those who share a concern about what may be the creeping monopolisation of Tesco, the rather wonderfully named website www.tescopoly.org is essential reading.)

November 9 2009 ~ The NFU urges farmers and consumers to write to MPs after the decision on the proposed supermarket ombudsman is delayed

A spokesperson at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS), which is also currently considering the introduction of a competition test for the building of new supermarkets, says that the Government will respond to both issues at the same time. The Farmers Guardian on Thursday quoted Terry Jones, head of the NFU's London office
"It was very pleasing to see MPs debate the issue this week and what we have to do now is make sure questions are being raised with Business Ministers. There's an awful lot of lobbying still to be done and farmers and consumers can write to their MPs and get them to put pressure on Ministers at DBIS to take action on this."
The NFU website today says,
" This is a hotly-contested issue, and as it is likely that ministers will make their decision before Christmas, we are asking you to write to your MP as soon as you can."
More on the grocery ombudsman.

November 9 2009 ~ " The irreparable ecological damage, loss of amenity and distressing divisions within communities caused by industrial wind turbines far outweigh any benefit of their insignificant and unreliable contribution to our energy needs.

So wrote the Country Guardian's Chairman, Angela Kelly, back in July 2007.
"Their tiny, intermittent output of electricity and negligible CO2 savings cannot possibly justify the sacrifice of our most potent national symbol and finite resource - the magnificent landscapes of Wales and the United Kingdom...."
Yet the sleepwalking continues. Warned by the wind industry that Britain's wind energy revolution would die without more large injections of money, the government responded by increasing the already generous subsidy by a third - but within weeks, costs for turbines, cables and other equipment rose by a similar amount. Ofgem, the regulator, recently warned that annual household energy bills - today about £1,100 - could increase to £2,000 by 2016.
Whatever may be the truth about the need to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, it is hardly surprising that voices are raised to say the money would be far better spent on making sure household energy efficiency is improved.
Instead, the government is throwing more and more money at the ever more voracious windmills. (A recent review of the CVs of a large number of senior MPs revealed that none had studied science above GCSE.)

November 9 2009~ Huge expansion of nuclear power in the government's energy strategy to be announced today

The government plans for 30% of energy used in the UK to be nuclear energy in the 2020s. At present it's less than 20%. The government's verdict is likely to "do no more than confirm decisions already taken by the private sector....the most ambitious expansion of nuclear power anywhere in Europe" says the FT today and it will, as we reported below, involve giant foreign companies: EDF Energy (French) plans two reactors at Sizewell and two more at Hinkley Point, Horizon Energy, (German), plans four to six reactors spread between Wylfa on Anglesey and Oldbury in Gloucestershire, and GDF Suez of France plans two more at a site near Sellafield.
In order to avoid long inquiries, the government's new central authority, the Infrastructure Planning Commission, will begin in March to fast-track applications and "avoid red tape". .

November 9 2009 ~ Where does this leave wind power?

The bulk of the UK's renewable energy capacity is supposed to come from a group of enormous offshore wind farms but- as we read in yesterday's Sunday Times - a £125bn plan to generate a third of the UK's energy needs offshore, the so-called Britannia Project, is looking precarious.
The problem, of course, is money. As we report on the windfarms page, onshore turbines only generate the energy of which they are capable for an average of a quarter of the time and need costly electric backup. Offshore windfarms are considered a little more efficient and do at least avoid the worry about dependency on foreign energy but one with a capacity of 3 gigawatts will cost more than £10 billion to build - twice the price estimated three years ago. In addition, bringing the power ashore needs hundreds of miles of undersea cable, at an estimated cost of another £15 billion. And what of breakdowns? Andy Cox, energy partner at KPMG, is quoted in the Sunday Times:
"The hostile environment that awaits these projects must be a real concern to investors. Even in the more benign onshore wind sector, there have been numerous problems with gearboxes and blades failing."
Today there are only three purpose-built ships for installing offshore turbines. The European Wind Energy Association says that more than 30 will be needed. The additional buffer of reserve energy in case a big plant shuts down (often coal-and oil-fired plants) will need to be doubled.

November 8/9 2009 ~ "So far, no evidence has suggested that animals play any particular role in the epidemiology or the spread of the pandemic H1N1 2009 virus among humans." Bernard Vallat

From the OIE website: "The OIE is closely monitoring the world animal health situation including with regard to infections of all susceptible animals with the pandemic H1N1 2009 virus." Dr Bernard Vallat, OIE Director General is quoted:
"Pandemic H1N1 2009 virus infections in pigs and other susceptible animals were assessed as probable from the very first days after the virus was detected in humans. So, it does not come as a surprise that notifications of infection in new animals species are received; on the contrary it demonstrates animal disease surveillance is efficient and functioning to the benefit of all... As national Veterinary Authorities continue and intensify surveillance for the pandemic H1N1 2009 virus in susceptible animals, it is very likely that there will be additional findings of other influenza strains. That is why we insist on the importance of epidemiological investigations of unusual illness among all animals, and the necessary collaboration and communication between animal health and public health authorities..."
Read in full.

November 7 2009 ~ The great global land grab

It is alarming to read about rich countries buying up land in the poorer world to secure their food supplies. The United Nations believes that about 74 million acres, well over the size of the UK, were acquired by outside investors in the developing world during the first half of 2009. More on food security page.

November 7 2009 ~",,, far from a unique case nor peculiar to the Halal trade..."

Another case concerning the adulteration of meat shows again how lucrative and tempting to the unscrupulous, meat crime is. See Meat Crime page for detail.

November 6 2009 ~ "All farmers, land managers and advisers have a part to play in ensuring the Campaign for the Farmed Environment is a success."

See the CFE website: "... The Campaign unites key industry stakeholders - the NFU, CLA, FWAG, LEAF, AIC, GWCT, AICC and CAAV - who will work in partnership with Defra and its agencies, Natural England and the Environment Agency, as well as the RSPB and other wildlife representatives." The Farmers Guardian calls it a "ground-breaking industry initiative" and comments today:
....the real challenge - persuading arable farmers to buy into the campaign - is only just beginning. The campaign was due to be formally launched at Mr Kendall's Bedfordshire farm yesterday (Thursday, November 5), with the Defra Secretary in attendance. The stakes are far higher than simply maintaining and improving wildlife habitats in and around England's farmland. .."

November 5 2009 ~ Campaign for the Farmed Environment to be announced today

Hilary Benn wants the 442,000 acres that used to be left as set aside to stay "uncropped" and says that at least one third of this should be used in a way to help wildlife. It is a voluntary scheme but the Times says ominously
"If farmers fail to take up the plan, the alternative will be the prospect of payments being docked"
adding that Jim Paice supports the approach "in principle, though he believed that the targets should be based on populations of wildlife and plant life rather than area". The RSPB wanted mandatory farming rules implemented to benefit wildlife. DEFRA preferred a voluntary option. The NFU's and CLA's Campaign for the Farmed Environment will be launched at Peter Kendall's farm today.
Mark Avery's (RSBP) blog, rather unfortunately and provocatively, reminds readers of what he thinks is the cost to the "taxpayer":
"..£1.5m (there - you didn't know that the voluntary approach meant that you had volunteered the money did you?)"
However, more constructively, he mentions options such as beetle banks, skylark patches and nectar-rich field margins. "If implemented then such measures will do a great deal of good for farmland wildlife. We know skylark patches work very well on our own Hope Farm in Cambridgeshire."
UPDATE Farmers Guardian this evening:
"....A network of Beacon Farms will be established across the country to demonstrate how the Campaign will work in practice... The Campaign will ask farmers and land managers to renew their existing Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) agreements and choose at least one in-field option, retain and correctly record their current area of uncropped land and adopt at least one voluntary measure to meet the campaign targets..."

November 4/5 2009 ~ Ombudsman - "Campaigners now have another couple of months to drive their message home." Andrew George

In a press release on Tuesday, Andrew George, MP, warned Competition Minister, Kevin Brennan MP, that the Government risks undermining the authority of its primary competition authority if they refuse to accept the Competition Commission's key recommendation following a two year inquiry into the supermarket supply chain. Extract:
"....This is not a Professor Nutt moment. More a Kelly Inquiry. In other words, the Government would have to come out with some pretty earth shattering evidence to take the risk of contradicting its competition authority, set up by act of Parliament and operating within its own European Act. Government regulators should deal with market failure, it should not be subject to political interference."
(Ombudsman page)

November 4 2009 ~ "The row between the Government and its scientific advisers blazes on like an out-of-control forest fire..."

The sacking of Professor Nutt (when he explained that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than many illegal drugs) for "not reflecting policy" has rightly worried many. The government's attitude to its scientific advisers tempts one to be very wary of anything a government adviser now says - unless, of course, they are immediately sacked. A.N. Wilson wrote yesterday in his article
".... if we examine the history of scientific experts - and, in particular, scientists advising governments - they do not have a very happy record.
Do you remember the foot-andmouth outbreak of 2001? All reasonable farmers and vets believed that the epidemic could be contained by vaccine, or simply by isolating animals. But the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Government, David King, insisted upon a massive cull.
Millions of sheep and cows were destroyed, and every hill and valley, which once echoed to bleating or lowing was silenced and despoiled. Did we ever hear a word of apology when events proved this government scientific adviser wrong? ..."
Read in full. Interesting that there have been several mainstream references in the last few days to Prof David King's tragic mishandling of the 2001 crisis. Has distance lent enlightenment to the view?

November 3 2009 ~ " The issue is about sustainability, security of supply and supporting the farming industry.. Let us streamline it all."

Lindsay Hoyle's debate yesterday is worth reading in full. As he said, "Farming has enough on its plate; we need to sort out the badger problem in other areas and we must ensure that the nitrates issue is sorted out as well. All these pressures are being exerted on farmers. My last point to the Minister is about the forms. Why do farmers have to fill in form after form? Why do we not let them get on with what they do best - farming? We could avoid the duplication for different Departments. Let us streamline it all, so that there is one form, instead of the multiple forms, for all the Departments. The bottom line is that if farmers are filling forms, that stops them from making money. In the UK we have good pig, beef and dairy industries. We have upland and lowland sheep farmers. We have to protect the future, including that of our chicken and egg industries. I look to the Government to be on the side of farmers and not against them. I look forward to what the Minister has to say...."
Rather ominously however, when David Drew asked Jim Fitzpatrick,
"Can I be assured .... that DEFRA is on board with the recommendation for an ombudsman...?"
no such assurance was forthcoming. The Minister's remarks were padded with truisms rather than any firm suggestions that useful changes were about to be announced.

November 3 2009 ~ "The issue is the fact that the main, big supermarkets have not signed up. If they were to do so, a lot of the problems would stop..."

Yesterday's important debate on Supermarkets and Regional Farming can be read in full here. Extract:
"....as we know, farming has been under the cosh. It went through foot and mouth disease and bluetongue. Indeed, farming in the UK has been through all sorts of other problems. Of course, farming has overcome whatever has been thrown at it - farming struggles on ....With constant pressure to reduce prices, farmers are often unable to make profits. The way to address the issue for the benefit of farmers and consumers alike is for the Government to follow the advice of the Competition Commission and introduce a watchdog to oversee supermarkets..... one was supposed to be appointed in August this year.... Of course, the introduction of an ombudsman to police the way that supermarket supply chains operate is called for...."
"....Research has shown that consumers want to buy local produce. They want to ensure that there is local business and a local economy, and that is still true in the current economic downturn."
(More extracts on the Ombudsman page - or read debate in full here.

November 3 2009 ~ Sarkozy's call to the EU to fulfil a "moral duty to support farmers"

The Farmers Guardian reports on the £1.5bn rescue package for french farmers. "Farmers are a part of France's national identity and the key to a sector that has as much potential for the future as nanotechnologies or aerospace," said Nicholas Sarkozy.
"He said the national plan should be in place before the end of the year and called on the EU to match his urgency by introducing financial and regulatory measures to save Europe's dairy sector from destruction."

November 2 2009 ~"If I were sensible, moderate Professor Sir David King I would have stern words with this soundalike character: otherwise some people might be in danger of mistaking him for an hysterical fool..."

James Delingpole of the Telegraph blog today takes up the story (see also our posting for Oct 30 below) of the way, as he puts it, "Tony Blair's former chief scientific advisor and foot-and-mouth massacre guru - has spoken out against climate change alarmism..".
"....Nor, one hopes, is he any relation of the Sir David King who led the British delegation to a science conference in Moscow in 2004, whose performance prompted the following disgusted after-action report by the conference chairman Alexander Illarionov:
'In our opinion the reputation of British science, the reputation of the British government and the reputation of the title "Sir" has sustained heavy damage.'
(A belated thanks to Brent in Canada for alerting us to all this.)

November 2 2009 ~ H1N1: Grim situation in the Ukraine

Although the so-called swine flu has virtually fallen out of mainstream news in the UK, it has most certainly not gone away. 60 people in the Ukraine have died of respiratory problems in one week. We hear that 190,000 are infected with H1N1 and the country has ordered a three-week closure of schools and cinemas - and has made an urgent appeal to world powers to help combat the disease. Poland and Slovakia responded immediately .." See H1N1 page While there are more than 46,000 confirmed A/H1N1 flu cases reported on the Chinese mainland, the Ukraine total does seem extraordinarily high..

November 2 2009 ~ European MEPs furious at EID insistence "a great tragedy that the European Commission claims electronic tagging is necessary.."

There was a special hearing on compulsory electronic identification (EID) for sheep yesterday. Alberto Laddomada*, Head of Animal Health in the Commission said he considered that there was no reason to change the regulations which will be introduced by 1st January 2010. (See Sheep tagging page) Farming Uk reports:
" In an angry response, Struan Stevenson MEP said that the European Commission were modelling their preferred system of EID on trials conducted in Spain. Struan added: "Stationary readers, computers, software and the tags themselves will cost a hill-farmer with 50-score of sheep around £7,000 to set up and over £3,000 a year to run. This is completely beyond their financial scope. It is a great tragedy that the European Commission claims electronic tagging is necessary to avoid a wipe out of Europe's flocks by foot and mouth disease or other diseases."
Read in full

November 2 2009 ~*It may be remembered that Alberto Laddomada is the commissioner we found to be so intransigent over any revision of the rules concerning vaccination against FMD

During the meeting in Brussels (October 2007), instead of admitting fairly that the ban on FMD vaccination has far more to do with EU protectionism than any veterinary concern, he was clinging to the notion that so-called "carriers" are a problem. The notes on transmission and spread written in 2001 by Keith Sumption, now Secretary, FAO European Commission for the Control of FMD -EUFMD) show either that the Commissioner is not fully briefed on foot and mouth or else is being less than open about his own knowledge of FMD vaccination. Dr Sumption wrote:
".... Into our understanding of how virus is likely to move off farms, we must add the findings that vaccinated animals produce little or any virus by routes that are expected to be involved in spread by people or objects. The above is consistent with vaccination being seen to be highly successful in emergency use in countries with poor levels of bio-security in relation to the UK...
If a vaccine takes 4-5 days to lead to a strong level of immunity (i.e. at least prevention of disease even if full effect on transmission has not yet been reached) then vaccination can "get ahead" of the epidemic by ensuring that a sufficient number of farms are vaccinated 4-5 days ahead of anticipated first exposure to virus. .) Read in full.)

Oct 30 2009 ~ "...we need to be very careful about purporting to be able to supply very detailed and apparently accurate information about how the climate will be in 50 or 100 years' time"

The former CSA, Sir David King, (who, it will be remembered, presided over the mass slaughter of so many millions of healthy, uninfected animals in the foot and mouth disaster of 2001) is quoted today by the Times:
"When people overstate happenings that aren't necessarily climate change-related, or set up as almost certainties things that are difficult to establish scientifically, it distracts from the science we do understand. The danger is they can be accused of scaremongering. Also, we can all become described as kind of left-wing greens."
Sir David seems to have forgotten that in 2004, he gave a most serious warning. Geoffrey Lean reported in the Independent and Brent in Canada reminds us today, that Sir David warned
"Antarctica is likely to be the world's only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked"
. Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at the University of Oxford, is also quoted: "Some claims that were made about the ice anomaly were misleading. A lot of people said this is the beginning of the end of Arctic ice, and of course it recovered the following year and everybody looked a bit silly."
The article should be read in full.

Oct 30 2009 ~ "The results of the survey will be used to plan our future policy and any additional surveillance in 2010..."

As we reported on October 23rd below, DEFRA's winter surveillance into bluetongue begins shortly. If it shows that there is no circulating virus, it will also take us a step closer to being able to consider officially declaring freedom from disease at some point in the future. Read statement and Q and As in full on the Bluetongue pages

Oct 30 2009 ~ "we are deeply concerned about Defra's current plans for England.." BVA President

"In particular," said Prof Bill Reilly in his speech at the BVA North of Ireland Dinner, "the separation of animal health from animal welfare and the lack of a clear line of command in the event of a disease outbreak."
He added that he had been appointed to the Advisory Group on responsibility and cost sharing and "as one of four vets on the Group I shall endeavour to provide a strong voice to state our case. But I'm under no illusion about the uphill struggle I face."
He reminded his audience that farmers in England do not readily accept the Government's arguments for the RCS proposal, but "I believe that in the current financial climate ongoing discussion and dialogue is needed if we are to maintain the protection that the industry, and indeed the economy, needs from outbreaks of epizootic disease...." See also cost sharing page

Oct 30 2009 ~ "Will the Minister explain why dairy farmers should believe that this Government remain committed to UK production?"

Graham Stuart asked Jim Fitzpatrick why they should - since the British herd of dairy cows is down by more than a fifth since 1997, and the number of dairy farms has halved since 2000. The exchange concerned the European emergency milk fund of 280 million euros the logistics of which are still to be worked out. Natascha Engel wondered what the Minister could do in the meantime "to support dairy farmers here, who are really struggling to survive?" Nothing of consequence seemed to be forthcoming. See Hansard.

Oct 30 2009 ~ Will Syngenta funded research have sufficiently wide terms of reference?

David Taylor questioned yesterday whether a study into bee health would be free from bias since it is funded by Syngenta, a company that produces the neonicotinoid pesticide whose ingredient, thiamexotham, is deadly to honey bees. Would the University of Warwick research have "sufficiently wide terms of reference" to examine the link between pesticides and Britain's declining bee population? Dan Norris, the junior environment minister, acknowledged the concerns but insisted the "highest possible standards" would be maintained. Some might feel that Dan Norris' answers in this exchange were less than reassuring. (Read Hansard extract)

October 30 2009 ~"Is it not about time that we had a proper champion-an ombudsman-to redress the balance in favour of the British consumer and the British producer and away from the supermarket?"

This question was asked yet again yesterday (Hansard) by Albert Owen. Jim Fitzpatrick said
"I can assure him that on the ombudsman, the Government are considering the Competition Commission's recommendations. I can also assure him that we are doing what we can to ensure that local producers can get into supermarkets." (See ombudsman pages)

October 30 2009 ~ "Never in the field of human endeavour did so many need so few to see sense to prevent the world bankrupting itself again to no purpose. ..."

Yesterday, in the House of Commons (Hansard), Jim Fitzpatrick said that Lord Stern's comments urging everybody to become vegetarian, had been 'slightly exaggerated' and were "not the position of the government". He said: "We support the British agricultural industry. We support our meat producers." He added later that "dealing with the waste of 30 to 40 per cent. of all the food that we buy from supermarkets is a far more crucial way of dealing with the problem of emissions. We should be focusing on that."
Bernard Ingham in the Yorkshire Post, after another blast at Lord Stern, writes
"..... I do not wish to enter the argument over whether any global warming is man-made or a natural phenomenon. Nobody knows - in spite of the hysteria that scientists, waxing fat on government research contracts, have generated .... it comes down to what we can do effectively and economically. ...Certainly, we should try to minimise our energy consumption, if only to save ourselves money. But so-called remedial measures do not come cheap, assuming they are remotely useful.... The first requirement is for the debate about global warming's causes to be opened up instead of closed down. ...."
Read in full

October 29 2009 ~"DEFRA knew about this and did nothing..."

The Rural Payments Agency lost confidential data belonging to anyone who has ever claimed a single farm payment. An extraordinary story is revealed this morning by Caroline Stocks at the Farmers Weekly The DEFRA spokeswoman said that a thorough search had been conducted to find the missing material and concluded that some tapes were "misfiled and placed on the wrong shelf'" She blamed "bad book-keeping" by IBM, who run the data centre and who were contracted as IT consultants by the RPA. DEFRA says it assumed that the two tapes that were never found must have been destroyed..." One of the whistle-blowers is quoted:
"I know people at the middle management level tried to advise senior civil servants to do the right thing and tell farmers, but they're not listening. It's symptomatic of the senior managers. There are a lot of good people working in the lower levels of the organisation, but we think the top-level board is rotten to the core."
DEFRA has admitted its data was not encrypted. Read FWI article in full and see warmwell's RPA pages for the whole sorry catalogue of incompetence and muddle since 2005.

October 29 2009 ~ "...he conveniently didn't mention the 400 million sacred cows in his native India, which pass wind just as often"

Lord Stern tells us to save the planet by not eating meat. Christopher Booker, not surprisingly, has a few things to say:
"...Even by the Green lobby's standards of self-deceiving absurdity, this must be a front-runner for the most fatuous proposal so far. ... Last year, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, the railway engineer who is head of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made a similar suggestion...though he conveniently didn't mention the 400 million sacred cows in his native India, which pass wind just as often as the cattle in the fields of carnivorous Britain.
Earlier this year, even the NHS came up with the idea that hospitals should stop serving meat to patients, because 'unless we take effective action now, millions of people round the world will suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the climate changes'.
Take Lord Stern's assertions that meat-eating is responsible for no less than 18 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions....according to official figures, all the world's agriculture put together is responsible for only 14 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions - and a large part of that comes from rice-growing in countries such as China and India.
Indeed, even if we slaughtered every cow and sheep in the world and then ate nothing but fruit and veg, the resulting cut in greenhouse gas emissions would be infinitely smaller than the imaginary figure claimed by Lord Stern. .."
Read in full Mr Booker wonders, " ...how have we let the Green lobby's obsession with climate change become the most costly scientific blunder in history?"

October 29 2009 ~ "When will any government have the courage to address their own sacred cows?"

The average man passes about half a litre of gas per day on an omniverous diet, we understand. The cows of India have been expanded out of perspective since any herbivorous animal will produce methane. And as for CO2, an emailer writes today:
"... When will any government have the courage to address their own sacred cows and say that the carbon dioxide deposited in the upper atmosphere by jet travel is significant. There are 1000 aircraft movements just out of Heathrow every day . Each one on average takes 6 tons of fuel. All that is deposited as water vapour and carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere."

October 29 2009 ~ "while many European consumers already baulk at prices for some food products charged by supermarkets, huge numbers of farmers are struggling to simply cover their costs"

euobserver.com "....Dairy farmers in particular have taken to the streets in recent months, angry that current milk prices do not cover their production inputs. To tackle the apparent contradiction, the college of 27 commissioners adopted a communication on Wednesday (28 October), outlining a list of steps to increase the transparency and improve the functioning of Europe's food chain..."
A statement by the EU's agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, is quoted: " To improve transparency in the system, the commission has published a food price-monitoring tool and is calling on member states to a set up a web-based service to enable consumers to compare the price of food in different shops." But one does rather wonder how effective this will be when, as we mention below, on Twitter few days ago, an English farmer reported:
"..Asda today, 4 litres milk £3.46. milk left our farm in tanker this morning at 17p a litre. 4x17p= 68p"
The commission paper proposes a list of measures to "tackle the negative effect on prices caused by speculators in the agricultural commodities market". See also www.foodnavigator.com
According to Google Answers the average expenditure in the UK on food is 11 percent of income. It is at least 53 per cent in India - while Tanzania, with the lowest per capita income, spends the highest share - 71 percent.

October 23 2009 ~ The sheep, slaughtered in a poultry shed for Halal meat, were not pre-stunned.

The "Dirty Meat" page describes Cheltenham Magistrates Court's sentencing of the perpetrators- who pleaded "guilty to offences of slaughtering animals without pre-stunning at a place other than a slaughter house, failing in a duty of care under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, failing to stain 'specified risk material' to identify it as not being for consumption, and failing to return a sheep movement licence to the local authority" - all of which sounds as though, to the British legal system, the breaking of bureaucratic rules is the major part of what is reprehensible. .
The lenient sentences may not be thought to reflect the seriousness of inhumane slaughter. While these three men may not have been involved in it, organised meat crime itself is cruel, capable of spreading very serious disease - and highly lucrative. Its perpetrators are as powerful as they are dangerous. It will never be stopped while the authorities are wary of tackling it head-on.

October 23 2009 ~ Bluetongue Winter Surveillance 2009

"GB has successfully halted the spread of Bluetongue", claims DEFRA - forgetting perhaps that the compulsory vaccination campaign in France has reduced the disease across the Channel from 32 thousand premises affected by Bluetongue in 2008 to this year's total of 67. The sacrifice made by French farmers has undoubtedly made things a great deal safer for England - where vaccination has hardly been embraced in spite of the best efforts of JAB.
Now Defra and the Devolved Administrations are going to carry out a month long survey across the whole of the country, starting on 1 November 2009. The idea is to get a clearer idea of the current BTV8 disease situation, and detect any incursion of other serotypes. DEFRA says it considers it "crucial" to continue to vaccinate against BTV8.
Samples will be taken from over 4500 cattle (not sheep), included those that are vaccinated: approximately 17 animals from each of about 16 chosen herds in the West Midlands, North of England, Wales and Scotland Regions. In the South and South East of England Region, which is considered to be at greater risk, a similar number of animals and herds will be tested in each Animal Health Office area.
The costs of sampling and laboratory testing will be paid for by the Government - but the costs in participating in the survey, (for which they have no choice) must, it seems, be paid for by the farmers. (France, which still has a Ministry of Agriculture, is making its continuing compulsory bluetongue vaccination prgramme free for farmers in 2010.)

October 22/23 2009 ~ DEFRA changed its website because it was deemed too "agriculturally focused"

If anything further were needed to symbolise the Government's lack of interest in and understanding for agriculture, this would surely be it. Following a freedom of information request, the cost of the new DEFRA website has emerged. DEFRA set up a focus group of 12 web-users to give its opinion, and the "soil-coloured masthead" was then changed to maroon and green - at a cost of well over £180,000. The site perhaps is easier to navigate on a simple level - although on the main disease control page you will be find such gems as " Cattle: Golden rules for a healthy flock."
The Mail reports the move with its usual tone of outrage - and reminds readers that earlier this year, Defra spent £300,000 on a survey to find out what kind of water ducks prefer - simply to discover it is rain water. Certainly one wonders what on earth DEFRA thinks it is doing at a time of so many disastrous cutbacks, the RPA scandal and the very damaging lack of trust and respect in which the former Ministry of Agriculture is now held by so many farmers.

October 22 2009 ~ " join the campaign against this pernicious tax "

The government's scheme to tax everyone who owns a horse in order to fund disease control is causing many to feel that this government assumes horse owners are rich and thus fair game. Melissa Kite in the Telegraph says
" .. a comfortable prejudice to wallow in.... scrupulously maintained by making sure that Defra ministers rarely venture into the countryside or meet real horse owners.... I would like to invite Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, and his metropolitan team of ministers to come to the livery yard...
There I would like to introduce him to the country folk he is about to burden with yet another layer of tax and red tape. They include four teachers, a paramedic, a cleaner, a probation officer, a social worker, a lab technician, a retired print worker, two writers, two small-business owners, a betting-shop cashier, a personnel officer and a secretary. Then I want Mr Benn to look me in the eye and tell me that these people are hideously wealthy and deserve three hefty new stealth taxes..."
The issue of Cost Sharing is certainly causing feelings to run high. The National Audit Office pdf file felt that DEFRA did not have "sufficiently robust financial or performance information on controlling diseases to assess routinely the costs and benefits of intervention, and to underpin a transparent and equitable cost-sharing scheme.." The new animal health body must be able to inspire trust in those who are being taxed to fund it. As Dr Roger Breeze put it in in his paper (when the notion of cost sharing was first put forward four years ago) "Cost sharing offers industry a chance to sit at the table as a partner to make sure that when it pays what is asked, it gets what is promised." Horse owners and others can visit www.rethinkthehorsetax.org/ a not-for-profit campaign led by the voice of the UK equine sector - the British Horse Industry Confederation (BHIC)
(UPDATE: One perplexed emailer writes,
"... this intended tax which must, from its very nature, also apply to pantomine horses. Here is my difficulty: If you are the back legs are you subject only to half the total and will this be billed separately by the Inland Revenue if income from this source is declared? Will we be required to declare the identity of the front legs and will there be an age related relief for the over 60s?")

October 21 2009 ~ "climate change" and "man-made climate change" are not one and the same thing.

Dominic Lawson's letter to the Independent sums up how there must be a place for calm and informed dissent about powerfully publicised assumptions about global climate.
What is the cause of climate change?
Colin Summerhayes (20 October) begins his letter with the statement "Dominic Lawson would like us to believe that climate change is unreal". On the contrary, my article did not dispute the reality of climate change; that would be preposterous, since the earth's climate has been changing for countless millennia.
What I actually wrote is that the average global recorded temperature has not risen for the past 11 years (a fact, not an opinion) and that this has led some scientists to argue that there are natural cycles now cooling the planet which are more powerful than man-made augmentation of the greenhouse effect. Hard as it might be for even some intelligent people to believe, "climate change" and "man-made climate change" are not one and the same thing.
Dominic Lawson
London W8
See also the short article in the Northern Echo by Peter Mullen, Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange. Extract: ".. the calm and sane approach indicates that we go through alternate per-iods of warming and cooling and these, as it were, correct one another. ....To discover the truth in these matters is no easy thing..... At least the BBC can be congratulated for at long last permitting an honest debate on the matter."

October 21 2009 ~ "an urgent need to clarify whether these risks are financial, to investors, or environmental"

The Royal Society's report Reaping the Benefits: Science and the Sustainable Intensification of Global Agriculture although acknowledging that genetic modification can, (as the BBC puts it), " ... lead to problems such as the unwanted spread of inserted genes into neighbouring wild plants", has provoked concern from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Genewatch UK because of its view that GM crops are needed to prevent a catastrophic food crisis by 2050. Less predictable concern is voiced by Professor Joe Perry of Rothamsted Research. He welcomes the report but also says that he finds it
"surprising that no mention is made of the environmental risks to biodiversity associated with broad-spectrum herbicide-tolerant systems. In addition, whilst the authors support what they describe as 'long-term, high-risk approaches to high-return targets in genetic improvement of crops', the report makes no mention of why these approaches are 'high risk'. There is an urgent need to clarify whether these risks are financial, to investors, or environmental. The recommendations regarding regulation are also welcome, but might also have stressed the need for improved transparency."
The Food Ethics Council gives a "cautious welcome" saying that the report:
" recognises that technology - including GM - is no magic bullet in the fight against hunger. We are encouraged by the Royal Society's understanding that social and economic policies must also be in place to ensure food security."
However, the Council is concerned that the report
"assumes that feeding people is about growing food, not how it's distributed and consumed. It fails to face up to the fact that a billion people already people go hungry, while many more are buying - and throwing away - more food than they need."
(See also Geoffrey Lean in the Telegraph today, Food Security page for more detailed reactions and the GM page. .)

October 21 2009 ~ Turkeys in the Canadian province of Ontario have become infected with the H1N1 flu virus

Reuters reports that
"Health officials are following up with people who had contact with the infected turkeys. One person with contact had shown flu-like symptoms... The turkeys' owner has voluntarily agreed to quarantine the infected birds, but they aren't likely to be prematurely slaughtered.... the discovery highlights the need for those who work with farm animals to be vaccinated for both seasonal flu and the pandemic H1N1 flu strain."
and quotes Ontario's chief medical officer of health who mentioned the risk of the virus passing between people and animals and evolving into a form against which humans have little or no immunity, but added that there is no evidence that the virus has changed.

October 19 2009 ~ H1N1 " the largest vaccination campaign in Canadian history...but the public remains confused"

In Canada's Globe and Mail, an article today poses frequently asked questions and gives what seem well-informed answers about the virus and the vaccine. (Latest warmwell postings on H1N1 here.)

October 19 2009 ~ "On 15 October, we decided to abandon our attempt at culling infected herds."

Reuters reports that USDA has confirmed H1N1 in a show pig "..H1N1 flu virus was confirmed in a sample from a hog exhibited at the Minnesota State Fair, the Agriculture Department said on Monday. Additional samples are being tested."
Meanwhile, Norway has reported 3 H1N1 outbreaks on pig farms since October 12 to the OIE . Norway's first response was mass slaughter "to prevent the disease from spreading"even though, as ProMed points out in its report on the Minnesota case,
"Based upon the Canadian and others experience with this disease the swine recover without any deaths or ill effects. It is likely these animals would have been allowed to recover without any treatment"
Norwegian authorities now say: "On 15 October, we decided to abandon our attempt at culling infected herds." www.pigprogress.net in an article quoted by ProMed, reports that
"another 8 pig herds in Nord-Trondelag in Norway have been diagnosed with the swine flu, and Minister of Agriculture Lars Peder Brekk has asked that pig farmers be given priority when the mass vaccination program against the flu begins."
The ProMedModerator (AS) reminds readers that
"Influenza viruses are not known to be transmissible to people through eating processed pork or other food products derived from pigs.
Heat treatments commonly used in cooking meat (such as 70 deg C/160 deg F core temperature) will readily inactivate any viruses potentially present...."

October 18 2009 ~ "...the third year running when there have been signs of an abnormally cold winter across large parts of the world..."

writes Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph. Having described the unusual cold in many parts of the world, Mr Booker turns to the "bizarre £6 million campaign launched in the breaks of Monday's Coronation Street" (see our posting below) :
"....As complainants were quick to point out, this tawdry piece of propaganda appears to breach pretty well every requirement of Section 4 of the Television Advertising Standards Code, which prohibits any advertisement "directed towards any political end". It will be fascinating to see how the ASA responds to the Government's claims that every detail of its babyish caricature represents objective truth which no serious person could dispute..."
Turning then to Pen Hadow's Catlin expedition in the spring to measure the thickness of Arctic ice, Christopher Booker makes it clear that despite that unfortunate expedition, when its thickness measured with the latest electromagnetic equipment, Arctic ice was found to be "thicker than expected"
When he asks
"Is the obsession with climate change turning out to be the most costly scientific delusion in history?"
we can only fear that it is. This has been a decade of false claims, "best scientific advice" that was nothing of the kind, civil liberties eroded to a degree that we would not have believed possible when we were young - and increasing public concern about government. Evidence casting doubt on received political idealogy is now derided as heresy as a matter of course - but in the case of global warming, the strident Emperor may soon wish that he had put on some warm clothing.

October 15 2009 ~ Monsanto has not told the truth about the safety of Roundup says French Supreme Court

The BBC reports that the French Supreme Court has confirmed an earlier judgment that Monsanto had falsely advertised its herbicide as "biodegradable" and claimed it "left the soil clean". The company has been fined 15,000 euros (£13,800).

October 15 2009 ~ Western Morning News Front Page headline: "Bungling Defra wasted millions"

The WMN reports on the National Audit Office condemnation of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), overseen by Defra, which has
".. racked up £304 million of additional staff costs and requires six times more money to administer a claim compared to the system in Scotland. It has also lost around £43 million in overpayments it cannot retrieve..."
More detail on the RPA page, our chronicle of the disaster from 2006.

October 15 2009 ~ "They do not want to be at the mercy of bullying multinationals that are threatening to take control of our food..."

.Greenpeace policy director, Marco Contiero, has handed a 180,000-signature petition to the EU executive to stop the authorisation of Bayer's GM rice. He is quoted by AFP:
"Farmers are rejecting GM crops and are turning to ecological farming. They do not want to be at the mercy of bullying multinationals that are threatening to take control of our food. If the commission authorises the import of Bayer's rice and other GM crops, the world's major staple foods will be at risk."
On Monday, the European Commission will ask EU farm ministers to authorise trade in several varieties of genetically modified maize. However, most of the 27 EU nations are opposed to GMOs because of risks to the environment and of the kind of cross-pollination cited in the AFP report in which an organic farmer in Spain lost his organic status because he was forced to abandon growing maize as his fields in central Castilla as a result of wind-borne GM contamination.

October 14 2009 ~ "Unlike France and Italy....Britain has seen its people let traditional food skills languish..." New York Times

www.nytimes.com then reports on a welcome innovation The 19th-century former fire station of the privately owned Welbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire is being renovated to accommodate wood-burning bread ovens, stainless-steel cheese vats and curing rooms where hands-on baking, brewing, cheesemaking or butchery - with management and small-business courses - will be taught
"We anticipate the students to be a mix of young people, baby boomers looking for a second career and farmers looking to diversify the family farm"
Prof. Harry West, a food anthropologist who teaches at the University of London, is quoted. "There's a huge enthusiasm about artisan foods...But the enthusiasm is ahead of the practical skills base. The group of people who can turn flour into a loaf of bread without additives and machinery is tiny."

October 14 2009 ~ UK free-range egg sales now account for more than 40% of total retail egg sales

www.worldpoultry.net" It is being predicted that retailers will sell 2 bln free-range eggs in 2009. It is reported that this is the first time this has ever been achieved..."

October 13 2009 ~ Peter Kendall has called on supermarkets to back an independent ombudsman 'before it's too late'.

More on Ombudsman page.

October 13 2009 ~ "the modern generation of politicians like to talk grandiloquently about the "war" against climate change..."

Dominic Lawson's article today in the Independent, "Here's another phoney war: the one on climate change" is a wonderful read. First, it looks at the new sequel to the bestselling terror-debunking book,"Freakonomics" of 2005. The new book is "Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance" (Hardcover) . Like the excellent "Scared to Death" by Booker and North (Amazon.co.uk), "Superfreakonomics"(see Amazon.co.uk) takes a refreshingly caustic look at the current dogmas of climate change. Dominic Lawson then comments that the expert opinion and simple solutions offered in the book by experts of world class renown are not going to go down too well with the present holders of power.
"... Myhrvold estimates that this "save the poles" programme would cost roughly $20m, with an annual operating cost of $10m. Job done.
Alternatively, there is the British Government's suggestion that we spend $1.2 trillion a year globally on a decarbonisation programme...."
But, as Dominic Lawson says, "there's no glory to be had in spending $10m a year on giant nozzles squirting sulphur dioxide around the poles. For that you need very little by way of international summits, or press conferences to the world's media...."Read in full

October 11/12 2009 ~ "The situation is desperate," says Prince Charles

Once again, HRH Prince Charles has spoken up for farmers and for the British countryside with clarity and understanding. His article in the Sunday Telegraph mentions
" the horrific outbreak of Foot and Mouth in 2001, when millions of people were, perhaps for the first time, made aware of the fragility of the rural economy and the way of life"
The article, which could easily have been a depressing catalogue, is in fact a rallying call to action. He is making change possible through the work of the group he has called into being; the Rural Action Programme. Influential business leaders share his anxiety and want to support the "people who look after the countryside on our behalf - Britain's livestock farmers"
"...livestock farmers have not been able to make up the shortfall from the market. The dairy sector is not faring very much better, with real consequences for this country's future milk supply... the number of dairy farms has declined by over fifty per cent in the last decade and each week fourteen farmers are giving up ... we are now importing one million litres of fresh milk every day - and yet this country has some of the best dairy farming conditions in the world... after 2012, when support from the E.U. will alter so dramatically, it may be simply impossible for our family farmers to continue - particularly in the remote uplands, where farming is at its toughest."
He reminds readers how "disastrously short-sighted, not to mention harmful to this country aesthetically and economically, let alone socially" it would be if farming, the backbone and provider, were allowed to dwindle away, and mentions in particular the urgent need for rural areas to get proper broadband cover..
"When we finally wake up and find it all gone, it will not be possible to reinvent it - or 'grow' it in a test tube. The countryside is a living, delicate organism that must be nurtured." Read in full

October 11/12 2009 ~ "You should sell online, I would buy from you direct,"

Dairy farmers across Europe are continuing their protest against falling prices. During one demonstration in the High Pyrenees area of France yesterday, wooden crosses were planted in the earth to signify the death of agriculture, and banners showing a drowning man asked, "Sarkozy, must farmers pay the price?". 170 tractors and 500 farmers blocked the road to Tarbes, lighting fires from tyres and distributing leaflets to motorists who were, on the whole, very sympathetic. "You should sell online, I would buy from you direct," suggested one, quoted by La Depeche. Several mayors in their scarves of office are supporting the demonstrators. One said,
"A few years ago, in my commune there were 10 farmers. Now there's only one."
Feelings are running high against Bruno Le Maire, minister of Agriculture and there will be more demonstrations in the coming days. Meanwhile on Twitter, an English farmer reports:
"..Asda today, 4 litres milk £3.46. milk left our farm in tanker this morning at 17p a litre. 4x17p= 68p"
Prince Charles's article in the Sunday Telegraph echoes the thoughts of the motorist in Tarbes. He says that access to broadband is vital for any farm now. "If they are to stay on the land they will need all the help they can get, and denying them broadband, and effectively cutting them off from the Internet, will only be more likely to drive them off the hills and into the towns and cities taking with them generations of inherited knowledge."

October 11/12 2009 ~ "The first step is admitting we have more than one problem....we must consider multiple inconvenient truths"

Fascinating article by a climate scientist, Professor Jonathan Foley, director of the Institute on the Environment at the University of the Minnesota:
" I worry about this collective fixation on global warming as the mother of all environmental problems. Learning from the research my colleagues and I have done over the past decade, I fear we are neglecting another, equally inconvenient truth: that we now face a global crisis in land use and agriculture that could undermine the health, security, and sustainability of our civilization."
His article at www.e360.yale.edu considers the threat to ecosystems when world agricultural production has to double or more.. The extraction of water from deep groundwater reserves, the use of industrial fertilizers, excess nutrient pollution are all hugely damaging already and the situation will get very much worse - unless
"... advocates of environmental conservation, organic farming and commercial agriculture...put down their guns and work toward solving the problems of food security and the environment - with everyone at the table." Read in full.

October 11/12 2009 ~ "at last he has written a story about the well-established fact that the earth's temperature has not risen since 1998.."

Under the headline "The BBC's amazing U-turn on climate change" Damian Thompson, the Telegraph blogger, expresses amazement that the BBC's climate change correspondent, Paul Hudson, is now seriously reporting theories suggesting we may well be in for 30 years of cooling quoting both Piers Corbyn's theories about solar cycles and Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University whose research suggests that cyclic temperatures of the oceans correspond with global temperatures. Since the "Pacific decadal oscillation" is now in a cold cycle, global temperatures are following. Damian Thompson comments:.
"Talk about an inconvenient truth...his scrupulous approach only makes matters worse for BBC executives who have swung the might of the corporation behind that orthodoxy, often producing what amounts to propaganda"
( Paul Hudson's BBC article was published on Friday. He certainly puts both sides of the heated argument, explaining that the Met Office "predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998)" while sceptics disagree. "They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely."

October 10 2009 ~ A £3 million campaign to persuade sceptics of man-made climate change

The advert shown first on TV last night showing a father reading a story to his little daughter and which features weeping cartoon animals, apparently aims to instil fear and guilt in parents and reinforce in children what they are not yet able to question. Appealing to fear instead of reason suggests that the State we are in is indeed "very, very strange". The film may cause widespread worry - as comments online beneath the Times article yesterday show - but not necessarily the worry intended by the government.
Propaganda is neutrally defined as
"a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political or commercial purposes through the controlled transmission of one-sided messages (which may or may not be factual) via mass and direct media channels" (Richard Alan Nelson, A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States, 1996)
The Times reports on the advert - as does the warmwell windfarm page Anyone who feels it would be appropriate to make a complaint to the ASA can do it online here.
(Meanwhile, Nick Clegg has told The Westmorland Gazette "I know how committed people in South Lakeland are to creating renewable energy - but the focus must always be on energy generation that is suited to each local area. We will protect the historic landscape of the South Lakes and will not allow it to become industrialised. What Cumbria needs is an ambitious programme to make sure that its hydro and tidal energy potential is properly tapped." )

October 9 2009 ~ "Direct exposure to cattle, sheep and horses during Extra Mural Study can have profound effects on both a student's future career and attitudes towards animal care"

A BVA Animal Welfare Foundation news release announces that "an exciting and unique veterinary education project" has been selected by the BVA Animal Welfare Foundation (BVA AWF) for funding under the Norman Hayward Fund.
"Maximising Value of Extra-Mural Study Placements on Cattle, Sheep and Horse Units" aims to develop and validate welfare and health planning assessment tools for cattle, sheep and horses for students on their pre-clinical Extra Mural Study (EMS) placements. It will also develop teaching methods to enhance the ability of veterinary students to apply formal, scientifically-valid, practical welfare assessment in the field and enable them to ethically appraise what they see and do. The three-year project starts in the veterinary schools at the University of Bristol and University of Glasgow this October with the aim of sharing the findings with all UK vets schools in future.
More detail

October 9 2009 ~ The world needs to invest £51.7 billion a year in agriculture in developing countries to feed 9.1 billion people in 2050 says FAO

In a paper ahead of a forum on October 12-13 in Rome on how to feed the world in 2050, the FAO says most of this investment would have to come from private investors: farmers buying seeds, fertilizers and machinery and businesses investing in processing facilities, while public investments are needed in agriculture research and development, in big infrastructure projects such as building roads, ports, storage and irrigation systems as well as into education and healthcare.
At the G8 meeting in July leaders of rich nations pledged $20 billion over three years (about £12.5 billion) to boost agricultural investment in poorer countries and fight hunger. Reuters reports.

October 9 2009 ~ Plum Island will be offered for sale in about six months

"Congress last year approved a public sale of the 840-acre island " More detail

October 8 2009 ~ Free vaccination against bluetongue for French farmers next year

The French Agriculture Minister, Bruno Le Maire, has announced free vaccination against Bluetongue with a grant next year of 98 million euros. More on Bluetongue page.

October 8 2009 ~ UK Energy Research Council study warns that the government exhibits "little concern about oil depletion".

Amid all the flurry of activity about carbon trading and climate change, the serious and undeniable consequences of the imminent end of cheap oil are being ignored (in public at least) by major governments including our own. The BBC today reports on the UK Energy Research Council's surprise that the UK government rarely mentions the issue in official publications.
UKERC now acknowledges, albeit with extreme caution, that "more than two thirds of existing capacity may need to be replaced by 2030 solely to prevent production from falling... Given the lead times required to both develop substitute fuels and improve energy efficiency, this risk needs to be given serious consideration.."
Warmwell's peak oil pages have been updated regularly since 2004 and include the warning made in August from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil that the government "remains unprepared for peak oil"

October 8 2009 ~ FMD Biodefence centre in Kansas - more safety studies required

The proposed new foot-and-mouth disease research lab in Kansas to take the place of that at Plum Island (New York) was to be given money to start construction work. Now, the money is being withheld because congressional negotiators want the Homeland Security Department to produce new studies to indicate whether the lab can operate safely. More detail on the Plum Island/Kansas page.

October 7 2009 ~ Nick Herbert wants to put the 'F' word back into the Ministry

The Shadow DEFRA Minister, Nick Herbert, says DEFRA's name should incorporate the word "farming".
Farmers Weekly reports this evening that he told a packed room of farmers and party delegates
"I want to put the 'F' back into DEFRA."
Nick Herbert has also been speaking at the Party Conference about home produced food. He said yesterday that the government should purchase sustainable British produce without increasing costs. "Every year the public sector spends more than £2 billion on food," he said "But not a single rasher of bacon served to our armed forces is British. The Treasury buys barely half of its food from Britain."
www.supplymanagement.com reports that the Conservatives have set up a sustainable food procurement advisory group to be led by Zac Goldsmith and added that the Tories want to see hospitals, schools and local authorities buying food local food.

October 6 2009 ~ "Without radical action, more farmers will go out of business and there will be a further exodus from rural areas"

Yesterday's protest by EU dairy farmers in Brussels is described in full at euobserver.com
"The younger farmers hurled bottles, bags of grain and potted plants at a phalanx of riot police with shields and gas-masks at hand, while razor-wire barricades protected the council building and water cannon lay ready....world markets have seen a sharp decline. A recent drop of some 40 percent has pushed milk prices to 1992 levels... A litre of milk currently costs 40 cents to produce, but farmers cannot sell for more than 20 cents... The farmers want the EU to abandon plans to scrap milk quotas and are demanding the creation of a new European agency to orchestrate supply and demand for milk..."
Copa President Padraig Walshe is quoted: "EU farmers are furious. Fourteen billion euros of their income is being re-distributed amongst other stakeholders in the food chain, especially retailers...Without radical action, more farmers will go out of business and there will be a further exodus from rural areas."

October 6 2009 ~ Tamiflu in drinking water: ".. inevitable that society will need to devise ways of conserving water by recycling our wastewater."

Dr. Andrew Singer from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology in Wallingford writes to ProMed that it has been confirmed that oseltamivir carboxylate (OC)
"does not readily biodegrade in the wastewater, thus allowing it to reach receiving rivers. This effectively means that virtually all the Tamiflu being consumed either for seasonal or pandemic use will pass through humans into wastewater treatment plants and into our rivers..."
He says that although little of the drug should reach the bloodstream, the influenza virus can "relatively easily generate resistance in humans" and, in spite of the necessary investment involved, recommends the removal of pharmaceuticals from rivers, including the "estrogens and estrogen-mimicing chemicals constantly being released into our rivers." Read in full

Oct 5 2009 ~ "..people who give a damn need to ask the questions for ourselves.."

The Telegraph reports today on the Mexican rubbish dump that has been transformed into an urban garden
"a patch of land once strewn with the detritus associated with one of the world's largest cities, there now sits a 400 square metre (4,305 square feet) garden.... In Iztapalapa fruit and vegetables are grown in mini-gardens, on roofs and even on the walls of buildings. ..."
Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports today that "a growing number of Americans rolling up their sleeves and digging into the dirt to raise crops or livestock on a small scale."
In the global recession and growing awareness of peak oil, local food production is now more and more seen as a necessity rather than a hobby. Similar grass roots initiatives in food security, such as the Transition Initiative gather strength in the oil-addicted West. (Food Security) As Colin Tudge said recently, "Since the government is unlikely to act this side of food riots (which it will treat at "terrorism" and call out the riot police) people who give a damn need to ask the questions for ourselves.."

October 5 2009 ~ Budgens, the Co-op, Lidl, M&S, Morrisons and Waitrose are 100 per cent dedicated to beef produced within the UK

says the National Beef Association, adding that those six supermarkets in the UK purchase from no other source, even though home produced beef is significantly more expensive than beef imported from the Republic of Ireland. However, says the NBA, Asda and Sainsburys, "which lie comfortably within the UK's top four retailing companies, are less discriminating. The most recent country of origin survey produced by AHDB MS shows that only 68 per cent of the fresh beef on Sainsburys shelves in August was British while Asda presented just 45 per cent." Press release We hear too that Sainsburys and Asda have each bulked up their cheaper Irish delivery and "in so doing has helped to hold back British prime cattle prices which are still well short of levels needed for efficient feeders and breeders to cover their costs of production" (read 2nd press release)

October 5 2009 ~ NAIS: US Congressional panel cuts funds for animal ID program

/www.rapidcityjournal.com reports that a congressional conference committee has cut funding for the US "National Animal Identification System" by about two-thirds. Many smaller scale livestock owners have long opposed a mandatory animal ID system. USDA requested 14.67 million dollars to implement the scheme but the cut reduces it to 5.3 million dollars.
An email (opposing NAIS) received from America on Sunday reads,
"...NAIS is an attempt by corporate agriculture and some high-tech companies for force everyone who owns one livestock type animal, to register their property and their animals in a federal database. Every owner would have to have a 15 digit Animal Identification Number (AIN) for each animal. Once enrolled, an owner would have to report most movements of their animals to that system. They would also have to report the death of any animal to the feds within 24 hours. NAIS wants everybody who owns even one: chicken, duck, goose, exotic fowl, goat, sheep, pig, cow, horse, or other animal which they may designate, to be part of the system."
While it may be thought desirable for a central database to hold details of every single farm animal in the interests of disease control, there are other considerations - as the Australians found to their cost when trying to implement the similar and ill-fated NLIS.
(See also page on latest developments on EID and sheep tagging)

October 5 2009 ~ India's farmer suicides "the story needs to be told"

On the subject of films being made in India to explore the plight of farmers facing ruin and despair, the BBC quotes Vijay Jawandia, a well-known farmers' activist.
"People watch these films and it is nice that the issues are being discussed. However, the farmers are caught in such vicious cycles that one is not sure if debates and discussions can help without serious action by the government."
Read article

October 3 2009 ~ Birds are being exposed to waterborne residues of Tamiflu's active form and could spread drug-resistant strains of flu.

As we were warned in July, and have seen in the press many times since, the UK government's widespread use of anti-virals has been viewed as inadvisable. The US Federal guidelines are to recommend that "Tamiflu be reserved for treatment of the very sick and anyone who is immunocompromised." See H1N1 page

October 2 2009 ~ Competition Commission urges tighter planning rules on Supermarkets

The Competition Commission has now made a formal recommendation to the government that it introduce a "competition test" when considering planning applications by big grocery stores. The aim of the test is to stop supermarkets which are already strongly present in a particular area -("Tesco towns")- from building yet more stores or major extensions in order to prevent rivals from coming to the area.
Tesco had appealed to the Competition Appeals Tribunal who ruled that the Competition Commission had to provide more evidence. An analysis on the effectiveness, benefits, costs and proportionality of the test has now been done. The Guardian today reports.
See also page on the need for a supermarket ombudsman.

October 1 2009 ~ Cuckmere Estuary Report - a blueprint in how to conduct an effective and genuine consultation?

An independent report into the future of the Cuckmere Estuary with such openness of approach that it seems to have led to new trust. Such excellent communication skills and the provision of a "long-term stakeholder engagement strategy" must surely reassure all shades of opinion that a genuine consensus about the costs, risks, benefits and legal implications of the various different options for the future is being built and, in the end, the most sustainable solution will be agreed. (More)

Sept 30 2009 ~ "Vanishing of the Bees" will be released in Britain next month

The film suggets the cause of the dramatic bee decline is the use of neonicotinoid pesticides containing a substance banned in France but still in use in Britain, the US and elsewhere. More on bee page (Thanks to Anne Lambourn for this link.)

September 30 2009 ~ Bovine TB "...we need to reduce the load in the animal reservoirs in a humane and satisfactory way."

An exchange about the worsening scourge that is bovine TB from two correspondents to this website. They are both, but for different reasons, experts on the subject. One is the farmer Pat Bird, ( "Any country which ignores a reservoir of bTB as we are doing - in wildlife - is storing up problems for its human population in the future") who writes a TB blog for the Farmers Guardian, and the other is Dr Colin Fink, whose views are rather those of a medical man and clinical virologist . ("I am still of the opinion that feeding stations with high dosage of triple antibiotics for say 6 months coordinated, could be worth a try. It would not be that expensive, but would need very good attention to detail. It would at least reduced the bacterial load in those wild animals that are a reservoir for infection and often excluded from the badger setts.")
Their exchange of views, on the subject of risk to human beings as well as the toll on cows and other mammals can be seen here.

September 30 2009 ~ "I am still of the view that a badger cull in an Intensive Action Pilot Area (IAPA) is necessary as part of our programme to eradicate bovine TB." Elin Jones

The British Veterinary Association (BVA) has welcomed today's TB Eradication (Wales) Order 2009 giving the Welsh Assembly Government legal powers to use culling and vaccination of badgers as part of the TB programme in Wales. More detail on TB page

September 29 2009 ~ The BVA conference is informed by DEFRA "Ministers believe they should be taking that responsibility and be answerable to the public on issues of animal welfare."

DEFRA intends to wrest the issue of "animal welfare" away from "animal health" The rationale for keeping "welfare" under DEFRA's control was explained by Gavin Ross, Defra's RCS manager:
"Welfare is by far and away the biggest postbag ministers get from members of the public every week and it is an issue which goes far beyond animal health. Ministers believe they should be taking that responsibility and be answerable to the public on issues of animal welfare."
Not surprisingly, the debate on the issue at the BVA conference (see below) was heated. Today's Farmers Guardian quotes Ian Richardson, president of the Society of Practicing Veterinary Surgeons (SPVS):
".. It's a bit like having Laurel without Hardy, Jeeves without Wooster or Wallace without Grommit. Separating animal health and welfare will do nothing but harm. It is going to create a huge rift between vets and farmers and Defra..."
The new body (see Cost and Responsibility page) will still, of course, have to take account of welfare even if DEFRA wants to keep political control. Many vets see enormous confusion ahead.

Sept 29 2009 ~ " the relationship needs a new foundation: what the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy refers to as 'partnerships for delivery'..."

The government's Animal Welfare Delivery Strategy (pdf) makes no mention of veterinarians at all. This is one of the reasons why, in Professor Philip Lowe's timely report "Unlocking Potential", he says, "..I consider it vital that the relationship between the veterinary profession and the government be renewed. This does not mean putting the clock back to a time when government was the patron of the profession. Nor should it mean government relinquishing its proper responsibilities to ensure animal health and welfare. Rather, the relationship needs a new foundation: what the Animal Health and Welfare Strategy refers to as 'partnerships for delivery'." (page 16)

September 29 2009 ~ Humane Slaughter: "One session did reveal where improvements had to be made and these were passed on to the management..."

A very interesting conversation with the Technical Director of the Humane Slaughter Asoociation today, while being anything but complacent, did give us grounds for optimism. See the humane slaughter page for more detail. Membership of the HSA is just £15 a year.

September 29 2009 ~ "...all too easy for government to turn to industry and demand additional revenue when no prior effort has been made to overhaul its own procedures" NBA

Since the late 1980s when hormone growth promoters were made illegal in the UK, testing for evidence of these (such as clenbuterol, a synthetic steroid growth enhancer used illegally to boost the lean meat content of cattle) was carried out by testing carcases for hormone and antibiotic residues. Costs have risen dramatically. Now, the Veterinary Medicine Directorate intends to pass more cost to farmers without any accompanying examination of the real risk and rationale for all the laboratory work carried out so expensively by the VMD. As the BVA press release says,
"Around 1800 random samples were taken from cattle carcases in Northern Ireland last year but only one animal was found to have been treated with clenbuterol and there were no problems with antibiotics. Similar results apply to Great Britain... the NBA sees no reason why the testing requirement cannot be reduced to fall in with the existing budget and sees no reason for the VMD, and others, to take the easy way out and maintain current activity simply by asking farmers to stump up more money."
Read press release

September 29 2009 ~ Compulsory vaccination against the zoonosis, Q fever, in Holland from next year

As ProMed tells us, the Dutch Q fever outbreak is the largest of its kind on record. "...the number of human infections with Q fever, since the start of this epidemic in mid 2007, is 3313 ... Out of the 2145 cases reported so far during 2009, 2047 have been laboratory confirmed, 98 suspected; 5 died." On 26 September 2009 www.agd.nl reported that all premises with more than 50 milk goats or sheep (and also children's farms) will have to vaccinate their animals against Q fever ( for description of Q fever see wikipedia.org - as from next year. Agriculture Minister, Gerda Verburg, told the Dutch House of Commons that one and a half million doese of vaccine -the whole available stock - has been ordered. It is hoped that these measures will reduce the number of human cases of Q fever. ("The chronic form of Q fever in humans is virtually identical to inflammation of the inner lining of the heart (endocarditis),[8] which can occur months or decades following the infection. It is usually deadly if untreated", says Wikipedia)

September 25 2009 ~ Technical problem may keep warmwell.com offline for a day or two

Apologies. The hard disc is so full that the system is sluggish and an external data storage device must be obtained and used. Meanwhile, we are preparing an interesting and highly readable exchange between two experts on bTB. (Not yet complete but soon to be posted on bovine TB page)

September 25 2009 ~ "...governments - of all hues - have left the big decisions increasingly to the retailers and other powerful interests."

Tim Lang, professor of Food Policy at City University London, in this recent article on sustainable food production, comments: "...if you define food security as the 3 A's - access, availability, affordability - you'll not worry about the carbon or water footprint. If you make sustainability, on the other hand, the core goal for future food - the only source of food security - everything else has to fit round that." One interesting extract:
"... Policy is shaped by an old-fashioned Treasury view that all state support is to be resisted, especially to feather-bedded farmers. It didn't say that to the bankers!
I see a new agenda emerging, where food is a key function of rural policy. That means considering tricky issues like labour: how can we build new dignified work? How can we open up access to land for people who want to grow food, not run ponies? How can we integrate conservation with food production? As someone once said, the answer lies in the soil. Soil is our most precious resource. Building houses and roads all over it is folly..."
Read in full at www.futurecountryside.com.

September 24 2009 ~ Tomorrow and on Saturday the British Veterinary Association Congress will debate "a range of contentious issues".

See summaries on pdf file

September 24 2009 ~ Government plans "over the next 20 years" to protect the soil

Hilary Benn's words about soil quality might be thought a little ludicrous, given the seriousness of the issue - but this can be forgiven if the government is really on the track of a workable strategy to halt the erosion of the soil and put in place measures to restore it. (See today's BBC report) An article in January in the New York Times by Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry reminded us that unlike oil, soil "has no technological substitute - and no powerful friends in the halls of government."
The Telegraph today reports that more than 2m tonnes of topsoil from farms and forests is being eroded by wind and rain each year, and quotes Professor Bob Watson who says that safeguarding soil is "critical".

September 24 2009 ~ "...We should not poison our soils to save them..."

From the NYT article by Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry
"...Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological "solutions" for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.
.. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billons of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.
Any restorations will require, above all else, a substantial increase in the acreages of perennial plants. The most immediately practicable way of doing this is to go back to crop rotations that include hay, pasture and grazing animals.
... By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can better protect the soil and substantially reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution. ...with an increase in the use of perennial plants and grazing animals would come more employment opportunities in agriculture - provided, of course, that farmers would be paid justly for their work and their goods..."
Read in full in the New York Times

September 24 2009 ~ Caroline Lucas has been named as the new President of the European Parliament's cross-party Animal Welfare Intergroup

The leader of the Green Party has shown herself to be a champion of animal welfare as well as other vital issues for many years - as 88 references to her on this website alone bear witness.

September 24 2009 ~ G-20 summit - only local, sustainable and organic food.

Pittsburgh is now one of the greenest urban centers in the US. See report at the rather wonderfully named obamafoodorama.blogspot.com

September 24 2009 ~ "Suddenly, the confidence was there among us, the right courses of action were obvious, and everything else seemed irrelevant, distant, archaic."

Australia's Online Opinion on the subject of "Peak oil in transition":
"....there are already hundreds of Transition groups all over the world, and each community is tackling the problems a little differently. It might start as modestly as a car pool or a sewing circle, or it could be as ambitious as a local currency or an activist group to fight against imposing businesses that, one way or another, do not act in the community's interest. Neighbourhoods become more productive and more closely knit, favouring local businesses and activities seeing their own well-being as prosperity in itself.
As much as I find a lot of the environmental debate quite tiring, I found the Transition Towns weekend very uplifting. The difference was that the people who attended this workshop seemed more like the sorts of people who might actually do something to make their lives better. Naturally, such a weekend involves a lot of talk, but it's positive and enthusiastic talk..."
Read in full and see more about the Transition initiative here.

September 23 2009 ~ bTB: Barrie Williams spoke of a situation brought about by Government ineptitude, incompetence and sheer ignorance, similar to that encountered during the foot-and-mouth disease disaster of 2001.

The Western Morning News has reported on the Women Working Together campaign to highlight the plight of farmers hit by bTB. Barrie Williams is the patron. He said, "...nobody outside farming seems to be doing anything about it. What you don't have is mass media coverage, and that's all about imagery. There aren't the burning pyres, the piles of carcasses in country lanes, nor Phoenix the calf." ( More on Bovine TB pages)

Sept 23 2009 ~ Sustainable, integrated global surveillance system for zoonoses needed

A new US report emphasises that trying to deal with outbreaks of zoonotic disease as an emergency is a great deal more expensive than having a global surveillance system in place. A panel in America, set up by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council has produced a report, funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, that suggests USAID and the US State Department should, along with the WHO, OIE and FAO, lead an international effort to set up a global surveillance system.
According to Forbes.com, although such an integrated global surveillance system could cost about 800 million dollars a year to maintain, it's a "relatively small sum" compared with the 200 billion in economic losses in the past ten years alone caused by species-jumping viruses and other pathogens.
The report says that smallholder farmers and community representatives should collaborate with industry, the public sector, academia, and NGOs in determining how best to build the "trust and communication pathways" needed to support effective, evidence-based decision making and coordinated actions and that incentives are needed if disease outbreaks are not to be concealed by those fearing the consequences.
Read key recommendations (4 page pdf)
UPDATE as if to emphasise further the need to take zoonoses seriously ahead of disease, the news today is that nine cases of the horse disease West Nile virus (WNV) in humans in Italy have been reported since early September 2009 and the disease has now claimed the life of two victims, both men aged 71 and 82, according to the Italian Public Health Authorities. (Many thanks to Rebecca George)

September 22 2009 ~ "It is no good us passing laws to improve animal welfare standards in this country, but allow imports of meat into the country that undermines those standards." Nick Herbert

Marks & Spencer and Waitrose already have strict voluntary rules on labelling their meat honestly but, as the Telegraph reminds us, "two thirds of all pork imports into the UK has not been reared to UK statutory welfare standards and would be illegal if produced in this country"
"Produced in Britain" usually means that the meat has come from abroad and such misleading labelling is perfectly legal. Now, Tesco (still shamelessly selling intensively reared chicken for £2) is quoted in the Telegraph as saying
"It is very important to provide clear information so customers can make informed choices. That is why we are so pleased to support the Honest Food campaign." (Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Tesco's director of corporate & Legal Affairs)
Nick Herbert launched the Honest Food campaign at the NFU conference in February in order to get compulsory "country of origin" labelling introduced. He emphasised that it was not about protectionism but rather to give clear, honest information to people. In this video, Clarissa Dickson Wright, who supports the campaign, says how difficult it is always to know you're buying British.

September 22 2009 ~ Bovine TB: "The cat owners et al may be reassured..."

Following the posting below, warmwell has heard from Dr Colin Fink (email) With regard to the concern expressed by the owners of TB infected cats, he writes, ".. If they (i.e. the human owners) were to become ill and remain unwell for longer than a transient infection might be expected to last, then further investigation would be justified....no intrusive investigation ( biopsy of lymph nodes, lung biopsies etc) to find the organism, can be medically justified in someone who is entirely well. - It would be a hazardous undertaking." Read in full

September 21 2009 ~ Bovine TB: Worrying anomaly casts doubt on the level of risk to humans being classified as "low"

Unless the bTB infected animal is bovine, many human contacts of euthanized mammals are not being tested for TB - nor is TB in humans being strain typed as a matter of course. More detail on bTB page today (with thanks to the latest entry at bovinetb.blogspot). A single regulatory framework to cover work with human and animal pathogens is needed urgently.

September 21 2009 ~ ""Too many people with clipboards are running around the country telling farmers what to do.." Nick Herbert

The NFU has launched a campaign called "Why Farming Matters More Than Ever" and a 15-page manifesto. "We need to see a change before the election to put agriculture at the centre of our thinking," says Peter Kendall. Included in the manifesto is a call for greater research, a Grocery Market Ombudsman (more on this issue) and a genuinely independent body to decide all aspects of animal health and welfare policy. (See also the Farmers Guardian)
Farmers Weekly, quotes the Shadow agriculture minister. Nick Herbert:
"We need to look at quangos within DEFRA to check they are value for money,"
As for the Liberal Democrats, a Farmers Weekly interview with Tim Farron (Sept 14) gives his views, especially under-investment in agricultural research and development, DEFRA, "consultations", bTB, the need for an Ombudsman and so on. The questions are relevant and searching. Mr Farron's answers seem refreshingly free from jargon.

September 20 2009 ~ British Food Fortnight (19 Sept - 4 Oct 2009)

Thousands of activities will be taking place across the country during British Food Fortnight 2009 including food and drink festivals, promotions, tastings and special menus in pubs, restaurants and shops. See lovebritishfood.co.uk/whats_happening/ for national and regional details.

Sept 20 2009 ~ " the green and pleasant land itself, or what remains of it has never needed more protecting"

Richard Morrison's important article in the Times: "..a new quango - created, symbolically, by the unelected Lord Mandelson- may usher in the biggest change to the landscape in our lifetime. ...the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) ..was stealthily slipped into last year's Planning Act without anyone realising how vast would be its power.." Full posting on the windfarms page.

September 19/20 2009 ~ the loss of electrical power could affect water and food supplies, communication, banking and finance, and just about every critical infrastructure ...

'Systems collapse' is a concept we're getting more used to, together with the feeling that we are not quite the king pins of creation that we once thought. A recent US National Academies' National Research Council report takes very seriously the possibility of extreme space weather events which could so severely damage in the interdependent electric grid that "effects would cascade through other, dependent systems" See food security page for detail and links.

September 19/20 2009 ~ "Nobody can produce milk at these prices." Europe's dairy farming is in deep trouble.

On Thursday the EU insisted it would not abandon long-term farm reforms that include phasing out milk quotas after 2015. and there have been dramatic demonstrations in France and Belgium. Britain itself has become reliant on milk imports from Holland, Belgium and Northern Ireland as our own dairy production has ebbed. More on the food security page. Sunday's Observer "...given the soaring costs of fuel and food for cattle, it means that most UK dairy farmers are now selling their milk at a loss."

September 18 2009 ~ "not just some generic government white paper.."

   In yesterday's Huffington Post (which is the most linked-to blog on the internet, recording 8.9 million unique visitors in February alone) we read,
"....No matter how cynical you are, you can't ignore one of the fastest growing grassroots movements in the UK -- The Transition Network."
The author, Cameron Sinclair researched the Transition movement for his article but in the end felt that the very best way to get people to understand and make up their own minds was to encourage them to watch the interview between Rob Hopkins and "an English poet with a wry sense of humor to explain this fascinating phenomenon," (And if Matt Harvey on this video doesn't make you laugh aloud and rejoice in the Transition Movement, you must be cynical indeed. More here about the Transition Network - while the Peak Oil pages have been updated since 2004)

September 18 2009 ~ "to see them happily running around scratching about was a delight to see," says emailer

Pressure on the UK poultry industry to raise their standards received a huge boost this morning after Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall appeared on television. "People are signing up in droves," to join the campaign, as a gleeful emailer tells us. The campaign "Chicken Out" (mentioned many times below) wants a fair deal for farmers and higher welfare for poultry - and especially wants to encourage a more natural environment for them.
The UK government, however, is set to lower existing standards and, as the River Cottage/CIWF Chicken Out website puts it, "effectively give the green light to further intensification of chicken farming"
If this EU maximum is accepted by the UK, 19-21 intensively produced birds will be crammed into each square metre.
The email received today cheerfully describes what happens when intensively reared chickens are given a new chance.

September 17 2009 ~ Jim Fitzpatrick: the government is not going to change its policy on TB

More on the bTB page.

September 17 2009 ~ Not-for-profit UK Community Land Bank - an answer to too few allotments and the rapid rise in demand for land to cultivate for food?

"...the Community Land Bank might just help the word 'bank' get a better press in the future.... In effect, it would be a safe pair of hands in which both land owners and users could trust." More on the Food Security page

September 17 2009 ~ TB in alpacas. Dianne Summers' email

Dianne Summers, the highly responsible alpaca owner and welfare officer of the Cornwall Alpaca and Llama Group, has lost some of her best loved alpacas to bTB. According to her, there have been eight alpaca herds affected so far in the South West this year, with the loss of about 160 animals. She is concerned that more could be done - and worried that much needed information for alpaca owners is still lacking. More on TB page

September 17 2009 ~ Christopher Thomas-Everard believes most farmers would be prepared to contribute to the cost of a TB badger cull.

See bovine TB page. The Western Morning News today quotes Mr Thomas-Everard, chairman of the National Beef Association: "If we treat TB like rabies and properly explain that infected badgers have to be culled to stop infection spreading, then I believe that the public will accept diseased badgers being dealt with," he said. More

September 17 2009 ~ "Why scientists believe GM plants could be as adaptive and productive to local soil and weather as natural selection is a mystery.."

"..Tinkering with 1 gene or cassette, whilst natural selection changed much of the genome gradually- most varieties last 1000 yr are now lost." Twitter at its very best. Alongside all the worthy news twittings and unworthy ego-tweets stands "pengraiggoch" - an antidote to modern materialism and political posturing. The sights and insights of the farmer, Dr Ruth Watkins, (described by at least one of her fellow expert virologists as intellectually brilliant) give a true flavour of the hard work of someone who cares about her animals, the wildlife, the soil, the conservation work in her woodland, the local community - and the madness of profit driven "science" that so often interferes with all. (She's just had rather a disaster with her damson jam, is making cakes for the WI teas - and is hatching an idea to create a Landscape Park to honour the Physicians of Myddfai; medieval physicians who once walked to gather herbs in the local area of rich native flora.)
A truly cheering daily read - and each fascinating, moving or funny entry only 140 characters long. It certainly helps to keep one sane while writing up the latest on the humane slaughter page...

Sept 16 2009 ~ What actually constitutes a Foot and Mouth outbreak?

Although, during a check for bluetongue in Cyprus in 2007, FMD seropositive sheep and goats were found on ten flocks in a geographic cluster, there were no pigs or cattle found to be seropositive nearby. This was very strange. As the abstract of a new paper by David Paton et al: "Investigations into the Cause of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Virus Seropositive Small Ruminants in Cyprus During 2007" explains:
"...FMD had not been recorded in Cyprus since 1964 ... no vaccination programme since 1984. Since all the seropositive animals were at least 3 years old and home-bred, it was concluded that infection had occurred approximately 3 years previously had passed un-noticed and died out spontaneously."
The abstract concludes with two very important sentences:
" It therefore appears that antibodies to FMD virus NS proteins can still be detected around 3 years after infection of small ruminants, but that virus carriers cannot be detected at this time. This unusual situation of finding evidence of historical infection in a FMD-free country caused considerable disruption and alarm and posed questions about the definition of what constitutes a FMD outbreak."
The "considerable disruption and alarm" were indeed serious and upsetting as we recorded at the time in dated entries from October to December 2007. The ProMed moderator's concerns in November are quoted
"....This strange event has been characterised by EU-dictated cullings and other control measures; convincing evidence for a circulating virus is still lacking."
There was no virus circulating but the EU, insisting on its own definition of what constitutes an outbreak, caused 2000 animals to be killed - to the deep distress of the farmers concerned. One wonders if any lessons have yet been learned at EU level from the Cyprus story. It is to be hoped that the new paper raises serious questions - and initiates science-based answers.

Sept 16 2009 ~ "To help reverse the worrying decline in the UK bee population..."

The Co-operative has launched Plan Bee, a 10 point plan that includes action on pesticides, actions on farms, funding research and inspiring individuals to make a difference. More on bee page

Sept 15 2009 ~ "Change is urgent and inevitable"

"Sharing Responsibilities and Costs for Animal Disease - Government Policy and the Way Forward" is an article that was published on Saturday by the East Anglian Daily Times. It was written by Caroline Cranbrook, the Suffolk farmer. (She appears in the Country Life's September 2009 list of the 100 most powerful people in the countryside.)
Her article, summing up both background and current concerns is reproduced in full here and also on warmwell.com's cost-sharing page with the kind permission of both the EADT and the author.

Sept 15 2009 ~The Humane Slaughter Association (HSA) is the only registered charity that works in the UK and internationally towards improving welfare for food animals during transport, marketing and slaughter.

The HSA is a splendid organisation and we have only just heard about its work. This year's newsletter is a six page pdf file which, far from being a depressing or upsetting read, is full of justifiable optimism. The emailer who wrote (below) with understandable anxiety, "...when our food leaves the farm it is in the lap of the Gods what happens to them next.." evidently shared our lack of awareness about the HSA. But as the charity says on its website there are real, practical and lasting improvements in food animal welfare being made through "research, education, training and technical advances..." The charity has built an international reputation for its sound understanding of livestock and livestock handling.
Warmwell will be reporting on the current work of the Humane Slaughter Association on the new dedicated "wask" page in the next few days.

Sept 14/15 2009 ~ Following the recent concerns, the MHS has kindly promised to forward to us information from their vets about the legality of poor facilities and practices recently filmed at abattoirs.

We also wanted to know how far those overseeing stunning and slaughter in licensed premises really understand the WASK regulations. (The decision by the primary school in Kent to slaughter Marcus the hand-reared sheep in order to educate children about "all aspects of farming life and everything that implies," as the head teacher put it, has brought the subject very much into the news. See BBC report). The licensing of abattoirs should depend on good and humane practice - but how proper checks for disease and handling are paid for is also of vital importance to the financial survival of both decent local abattoirs and the farmers who care about their livestock. Recent posts on the subject of humane slaughter can be seen on the new WASK page (Welfare of Animals:Slaughter or Killing)

Sept 14/15 2009 ~ At present no fewer than 14 governmental bodies are involved in the area of animal health and welfare.

Hardly surprising then that many feel this is an area of muddle and overlap. A joint advisory working group on proposals for the sharing of responsibility and costs of animal disease with the livestock industry is being set up. The economist Rosemary Radcliffe is the Chair but members of the board are yet to be decided. Curiously, DEFRA has said it intends to keep animal welfare separate as part of its own responsibility. How welfare can be thought to be separate from animal health is a mystery. The Cost Sharing page, set up a year ago, will attempt to keep up with developments in Responsibility and Cost Sharing. Such a body has to be seen to be genuinely transparent and free from bureaucratic or political pressures.
Funding and costs have become a controversial area. The National Audit Office recently did not consider DEFRA to have
"..sufficiently robust financial or performance information on controlling diseases to assess routinely the costs and benefits of intervention, and to underpin a transparent and equitable cost-sharing scheme."
The farming industry is not going to object to help with funding if things improve - but in order to bring light to the present dark muddle and lack of trust, the difficult task of improving the control of disease and the quality of the lives and deaths of farm animals requires the input of the best up-to-date science, independent veterinary advice and the practical knowledge of those most concerned. Costs need to be realistically assessed and analysed - and then streamlined and properly controlled.

Sept 14 2009 ~ If the Conservatives win the next election they plan to charge farmers for the cost of a badger cull.

Farmers Weekly (Sept 11) reported that proposals for a cull of diseased setts were discussed during a three-day visit by the shadow DEFRA minister James Paice to TB hotspot areas across south-west England last week:
"...A typical dairy farm is likely to face a £600 bill under proposals for a targeted cull aimed at stopping bovine TB spreading from badgers to cattle... .
... Mr Paice. "I have always said that any cull of badgers should be targeted at those setts most likely to be infected...."
Mr Paice declined to put a figure on how much individual farmers would be charged. But industry sources suggested £7.50/ha (£3/acre), meaning a £600 bill for a typical 150-cow dairy herd run across 80ha (200 acres)."
See also bTB pages

September 13 2009 ~ Ed Miliband denies there will be power black-outs

He told the Andrew Marr Show that it was possible to meet the country's energy needs by using more "sustainable" sources such as "wind farms and nuclear stations" (BBC). He opined that "about 75%" of people were in favour of windfarms - (one wonders about his evidence if he means 75% of the population). As for "our" nuclear power, the French company, EDF, completed in January 2009 a deal worth £12.5 billion in which the rights of ownership and control over its eight UK nuclear reactors were handed over to the French company by British Energy. The next generation of nuclear plants that Mr Miliband and Gordon Brown mention with such assurance "would begin by the end of 2017" will be built, owned and operated by the French. (The public did have one month in April to comment on the eleven possible sites).
There are problems with Mr Miliband's apparent labelling of nuclear power production as "sustainable". According to the World Nuclear Association this month, 65,405 tonnes of uranium are required for the future reactors envisaged in specific plans and proposals and expected to be operating by 2030 and mining must now continue apace. Rich rewards don't often go with care for the immediate environment. In Niger this year, French teams found that water, soil and metal scrap were contaminated with dangerously high radioactivity levels from the area of two uranium mines. "Sustainable" and "public acceptance" seem to be concepts very much in the eye of the political beholder.

September 13 2009 ~ The cost of "more productive varieties"

Norman Borlaug died yesterday in Texas aged 95. Prof Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for agricultural "innovation and the development of high-yield crops". India uses the new species of short-stemmed wheat developed by Norman Borlaug. It produces more wheat - but instead of cow manure and compost, it needs more chemical fertilizers and pesticides - and most particularly, it needs more water. In 15 years, India's wheat production has tripled - and so has its reliance on groundwater. Underground, more than one-fifth of India's regional districts are over-exploited. Above ground, many of India's streams and rivers are choked by pollution. (Earlier this year, researchers studied a river near 90 factories operated by pharmaceutical companies. We read that "The river was a cauldron of 21 different medicinal ingredients.")
In many parts of India, farmers are now desperate. In the worst drought for nearly a century, farmers in some states are beginning to guard with shotguns those crops that they have managed to water. The genetically manipulated "miracle" rice known as IR8 produces crops in 125 to 130 days instead of 210 - but because farmers plant several crops a year, it too demands much more water. Vandana Shiva is quoted in www.thestar.com
"In a decade, India could look like Darfur. You have people running out of water, and it's a recipe for killing. It really does make people desperate. You go without it for just three days and you've had it."
There can be no doubt that Prof Borlaug considered himself a humanitarian. Of GM crops he recently said, "It's the only way to feed the world." It is ironic one of the reasons India now faces a desperate water shortage is because of its success in dealing with famine in recent decades. The trouble is that without water, seeds cannot keep people alive.

September 11 2009 ~ " obscured by unsubstantiated speculation about the inevitability of a 2nd wave of infection"

More detail on H1N1 page

September 11 2009 ~ New adviser blames the public for energy shortfall

The BBC reports today that the government's new energy adviser, a researcher from Cambridge called David MacKay, blames the public because they keep "objecting to energy projects".
Blaming the public seems a novel way to view the looming threat of blackouts. By 2015, nine oil and coal-fired power plants and four nuclear power plants will close. By 2020 the UK will be importing between 45 per cent to 70 percent or more of its energy. Given the global recession, Government plans for wind, wave and solar to supply 40% of the country's power by 2020 are optimistic to say the least. James Lovelock's recent comment puts all the political hot air on the subject into perspective:
"The right to have public hearings over energy sources is threatened by legislation soon due. Although well-intentioned it is an erosion of our freedom and draws near to what I see as fascism..There is no such thing as renewable energy; it belongs as an idea with perpetual motion and other delusions but politicians and ideologues have become skilled at using enticing words to cover essentially rotten ideas...Let us be proud to be nimbys, our backyard is the countryside and that is the face of Gaia."
Meanwhile the admirable grassroots Transition movement aims to transform backyards into truly sustainable communities. As Rob Hopkins says, " if we wait for the government, it'll be too little, too late; if we act as individuals, it'll be too little; but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time"

September 10 2009 ~ The French study on organic food, including nutrition, challenges the FSA report findings

The FSA report was dismissive of the nutritional advantages of 'organic' food but the major findings of the French Agency for Food Safety, suggest otherwise. The review (nine page pdf file) is based on the AFSSA report issued and recently published studies.
"... French Agency for Food Safety (AFSSA) ... an up-to-date exhaustive and critical evaluation of the nutritional and sanitary quality of organic food.
The major points are:
1. organic plant products contain more dry matter and minerals (Fe, Mg); and contain more anti-oxidant micronutrients such as phenols and salicylic acid,
2. organic animal products contain more polyunsaturated fatty acids,
3. data on carbohydrate, protein and vitamin levels are insufficiently documented,
4. 94 - 100% of organic food does not contain any pesticide residues,
5. organic vegetables contain far less nitrates, about 50% less; and
6. organic cereals contain overall similar levels of mycotoxins as conventional ones.
Thus, organic agricultural systems have already proved able to produce food with high quality standards..."
Read the report.

September 10 2009 ~ "The strategy will maintain IAH as a world-class centre for animal health research"

The Institute for Animal Health ( IAH ) is to focus its research effort on viruses affecting livestock and poultry and accelerate the move of virus research from Compton to Pirbright. The Government and BBSRC recently announced £100 million of funding to redevelop the Pirbright Laboratory and the new laboratory complex at IAH Pirbright should be completed in 2013. We read (thanks to the FMD news service of the University of California, Davis, for this link) "By combining virus research at Compton, on diseases such as avian flu and Marek's disease, with established research at Pirbright on diseases such as bluetongue, foot-and-mouth disease and African horse sickness, IAH will be better placed to enhance its position as a national UK centre of excellence in tackling diseases that threaten the UK's economy and wellbeing.."

September 10 2009 ~ "The MHS have confirmed that these matters are being investigated"

The Worcester office of the SVS - now known as Animal Health - has replied to warmwell's several emails concerning the video showing breach of animal welfare regulations filmed at various abattoirs in Somerset, Cornwall and Derbyshire. Although the AH says that, "Responsibility for the welfare of animals however ultimately lies with the keeper, transporter or abattoir operator" we understand from the MHS that it
"...reacted quickly after seeing the Animal Aid footage and identifying serious breaches of animal welfare regulations in one of the three slaughterhouses filmed....one slaughter man has had his licence suspended. In response to the footage in the other two slaughterhouses, the MHS identified a number of areas for improvement within one of them and the slaughterhouse operator is taking a proactive approach in implementing them."
They say that there seemed nothing to take exception to in the third slaughterhouse filmed, adding again that since "the scale and complexity of the work the MHS regulates means we cannot inspect every animal and bird at the point of slaughter and under EU regulations, full responsibility for animal welfare and food safety rests with the operators of slaughterhouses."

September 10 2009 ~ What plans they has the government for further regulating United Kingdom abattoirs?

In March 1997 there were 715 abattoirs. In March this year there were only 369. Long journeys and insensitive handling means that animals can arrive stressed and dirty. Abattoirs can cut corners to save money, and through ignorance, bad conditions or simple brutality, slaughter can be cruelly carried out. (See below.) Disease can spread fast. Over a decade ago EU legislation required veterinarians to do inspections but the UK officiously interpreted this as "veterinary surgeons" to replace the local meat inspectors (as if anyone who had trained for so long to protect animal health would be the right person to work full time in overseeing their death.)
When in 2001, Bob Kennard of Graig Farm Organics and the Suffolk farmer Caroline Cranbrook ran the campaign to keep small slaughter houses open, one victory was the changing of charges from per hour to charging per head of livestock ( in-line with the rest of the EU).Many smaller meat plants saw their charges fall by up to 90%. On 6 July 2009 Lord Dykes (Lords Hansard) asked
"... Her Majesty's Government what plans they have for further regulating United Kingdom abattoirs. "
The answer:
"....Under the new charging arrangements abattoirs will be charged a percentage of the time costs of meat hygiene official controls carried out at their premises. The change will not increase charges for businesses if official control time remains unchanged and will provide an incentive for businesses to improve standards and compliance and to use official control resources as effectively as possible."
Could any warmwell reader explain what this change means for the remaining small abattoirs and for small farms and smallholders?

September 10 2009 ~ Four years before any improvement?

The same answer revealed that
"Changes to the legislation regulating the welfare of animals in United Kingdom abattoirs will be required when the regulation applies in January 2013"
The welfare of animals in UK abattoirs will be considered only in four years time when EU regulations change? And, as we have so often regretted, changes in regulations demanded by the EU do not necessarily mean that things will improve.

Sept 10 2009 ~ "The peak oil story is definitely a bad news story. There's just no way to sugar-coat it..." Dr Robert Hirsch

Last week's announcement that BP's discovery of a "giant oil field" in the Gulf of Mexico "could contain up to 3 billion barrels of crude oil" needs to be seen in the context of world consumption. At 2007's global oil consumption rate of 85,897,000 barrels per day, BP's entire find could provide enough for just 34.9 days - and that oil is buried 35,000 feet down beneath the ocean. In "The Stonewalling of Peak Oil" by Steve Andrews, published yesterday, Robert Hirsch, author of the 2005 Hirsch Report (pdf new window), is interviewed on what is called "the deliberate avoidance by the U.S. government to talk about peak oil".
" ... Peak oil is a bigger issue than health care, than federal budget deficits, and so forth.
I've tried to think outside the box in terms of how we get the message out and get people's attention. I found nothing that I could do that I'm not already doing... But other people have other thoughts, opportunities, and connections, so I would urge them to conceive of ways to rationally and reasonably get more decision-makers involved in 1) recognizing the problem and 2) helping to elevate it to the highest levels of government, so serious action can begin.... "
See full interview with Dr Hirsch, published Sept 9 2009. The UK government has, of course, set up the "All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil" - but perhaps its most interesting - and disheartening - pronouncement so far is that the UK government "remains unprepared for peak oil". As Dr Hirsch says, anyone "in a position of responsibility in the government needs to then follow immediately and say "Here's what we're going to do about it," and no one seems prepared to do that..."

Sept 9 2009 ~ What is really being thrown away by supermarkets?

Tristram Stuart's "Waste: uncovering the global food scandal", recently featured in Andrew Marr's 'Start the Week' programme, drew attention to some eye-stretching figures and the obscene levels of produce ending up in landfill. This Autumn, Tristram Stuart writes in the Food Ethics Council's magazine
"It is now abundantly clear that fluctuations in consumption in rich countries affect the availability of food globally and this impacts directly on poor people's ability to buy enough food to survive."
Hilary Benn has said that some supermarkets are "working hard to minimise the amount of food they send to landfill" but Tristram Stuart says discovering the true extent of what supermarkets regularly throw out is a lot harder even than trawling through domestic dustbins to see what ordinary people are throwing away. All anyone has to go on is what the supermarkets choose to publish; " there is no official mechanism for cross-checking their data."
Mr Stuart considers that reducing waste is both easy and achievable but one wonders how far - for all the good intentions and worthy aims of government - the urgency of the looming food crisis is appreciated. WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) is currently undertaking research on the "amounts of food waste produced by the retail sector and its supply chain and by the hospitality industry". The fruits of this research will be "published later in 2009". Norm writing to warmwell.com from Australia, says: "I keep telling folks to buy pure ingredients and learn to cook and prepare your own food. I think I would get a better response from banging my head against a wall."

September 8 2009 ~ Who is responsible for ensuring humane slaughter at abattoirs?

The Animal Aid video - for most people, unbearable - was filmed at apparently "randomly chosen abattoirs": JV Richards (Rietfontein) Ltd in Truro, Cornwall; AC Hopkins (Taunton) Ltd in Somerset, and Pickstock Ashby Ltd in Swadlincote in Derbyshire during 2009. (Thanks to Jane Barribal for this information. ) DEFRA points out that it is
"an absolute offence to cause or permit an animal avoidable excitement, pain or suffering. There are also specific rules on handling, stunning, slaughter or killing of animals..." (More detail)
In "approved premises" there are official veterinarians (OVs) employed by the Meat Hygiene Service (MHS) and now under the control of the Food Standards Agency. DEFRA says that official veterinarians (OVs) "ensure compliance by Food Business Operators (FBOs) with meat hygiene, animal welfare and other statutory rules" and " take action on the spot to correct any problems they may find..." The "necessary follow-up action" is unclear but we read that it is Animal Health (formerly SVS) that "when necessary, instigates investigation with a view to prosecution".
Comment about the evidence in the video and what action is to be taken, has been requested by this website from the Animal Health offices in Somerset, Cornwall and Derbyshire. Animal Health webpage. (We note with pleasure the warmwell readers who have told us they have written to their MP or elsewhere to register their concern.)

September 8 2009 ~ Diagnosing bTB - a breakthrough? New technology can test for "any viral or bacterial disease using any body fluid"

"These devices are specifically designed to be field deployable and ultraportable allowing for very rapid detection of various viral and bacterial pathogens by relatively untrained personnel outside of the laboratory setting" (Source). The website of Biomagnetics Diagnostics Corporation describes the HTS-MTP - designed to detect, in a single test, the virus and count the viral load in a matter of minutes, not just simply screen for the presence of viral antibodies.
"No other screening, or confirmatory test, has the ability to measure viral load, a critical measurement .... It has the capability to screen several hundred percent more assays, per hour, at a fraction of the cost of current technology."
Bovine TB is now recognised as a growing problem throughout the world with an estimated 1.3 billion cattle at risk so the company cites bTB particularly - although it claims the technology can test for any viral or bacterial disease using any body fluid , "Field deployable integrated optical biosensor systems hold the promise to significantly speed the diagnostic testing process and to meaningfully lower costs..... Biomagnetics hopes to have products in use in China by late 2010/ early 2011, followed by US and European sales sometime in 2012, pending successful financing and approvals." (Animated diagram gives a demonstration of the machine here.) See also latest postings on existing technology for rapid, portable diagnosis in the field.

September 7 2009 ~ "you can only conclude that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum..."

Reaction of a Wiltshire farmer to one of the slaughter videos below
".. I thought that the law required live animals not to be able to see the demise of their fellows, and in that case the law was clearly being broken....When you consider all the time and trouble the Govt. has taken to shut down all the little local slaughterhouses, supposedly in the name of hygiene, and then you see this you can only conclude that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum."
Read the farmer's email in full.
Another reader writes, "... we are certainly well on the way to becoming vegetarians. You do your best to shop ethically - but, as we've seen from Gary and the other horrors, when our food leaves the farm it is in the lap of the Gods what happens to them next. Perhaps one day, we will learn why mankind treats other inhabitants of our planet with such disrespect and cruelty. What happened to "Do unto others" and all that?"

September 7 2009 ~ "I could not imagine working in such a place and doing what these videotaped people do every day, all day long..."

The cruelty carried out in abattoirs and "processing" plants in the UK and throughout the world happens whenever desensitised workers feel no sense of responsibility for terror, incomprehension and pain. As long as people believe that responsibility for cruelty lies with "others" in higher positions who approve of what is being done, animals are going to be subjected to unnecessarily cruel deaths. (When people are subjected to torture - the mindset is surely the same). This Compassion in World Farming page calmly explains what happens daily out of the gaze of the public. Gary from Kansas writes today:
"I watched the video you posted last week.(see below)...it wasn't a very nice video... if people only saw what takes place in abattoirs all over the world...
This is another one - truly "Factory Farming" at its worst. I could not imagine working in such a place and doing what these videotaped people do every day, all day long. I even hesitate sending you this link. I'm sorry to be the one to share this with you. No wonder the Veggies and Vegans have gone the way they have..."
For an experienced livestock farmer to say this shows the impact of such videos. Compassion in World Farming is working towards change at EU level but also urging the UK government, as a matter of urgency, to ensure that all slaughtermen are properly trained and regularly monitored. CIWF receives no government funding. Its approach is pragmatic and balanced - and it is tireless in its commitment to change. To offer support follow this link (new window).

September 6 2009 ~ ".. the worst kind of monopoly, combining market dominance with a long history of abusive business practices."

From the text of a petition to the US equivalent of the Competition Commission at act.credoaction.com on the subject of Monsanto. And it is the unethical practices of the huge biotech corporations that are so objectionable. As we have said before, GM technology itself should not necessarily be instantly discounted. As the much respected Dr Robert Watson, Defra Chief Scientist, said recently on the need globally to produce "in an environmentally and socially sustainable manner" a diverse array of crops, livestock, fish, forests, biomass and commodities over the next 50 years - in some cases, the technology to achieve this already exists: "We do not need genetically modified (GM) food to feed the poor in Africa today." However, he went on to say that GM technology can potentially help with productivity, drought, temperature and pest resistance. "I see very little evidence of health risks," he said, but warned against making generalisations. "Consumers will need to see real benefits before GM products are accepted in Europe." (Dr Watson was speaking at the World Food Business Summit in New York in June 2009)

September 5 2009 ~ Singapore is the 4th country detecting and reporting H1N1 virus in pigs..."

ProMed moderator comment continues, "...The virus infected another animal species, turkeys, in Chile. Similar but unidentified or unreported events involving the same or additional species, may have occurred in other countries and should be surveyed and recorded..." More detail and up-to-date pandemic flu postings on H1N1 page.

September 4 2009 ~ The best slaughterhouses can provide a high standard of welfare - but stunning and handling are all too often bungled elsewhere.

Footage from the charity, Animal Aid, (August 2009) is a 10 minute compilation of the reality of cruel handling. Few want to engage with this - but the excellent Compassion in World Farming does and is urging the government, as a matter of urgency, to ensure that all slaughtermen are properly trained and regularly monitored. As an Environmental Health Officer writes to us today
"Stunning is the real problem in the UK and needs to be tackled in all slaughter, whether religious or non-religious. FAWC, MHS and Food Standards Agency should concentrate on improving Animal Welfare in handling and lairage throughout the UK ...no matter what method used , stun, non-stun, mechanical, manual, the method is always cruel if there is absence of concern for welfare."
The suffering "is not confined to a few UK slaughterhouses." CIWF says that serious deficiencies in slaughter practice have been documented in a number of EU countries by the EC's Food and Veterinary Office as well as by various animal welfare organisations. All too commonplace is evidence that rough handling and incompetent stunning leads to animals "being stunned two or three times and regaining consciousness before throat cutting..." (More) See also CIWF's supermarket survey and shopping guide to help consumers vote with their feet.

September 4 2009 ~ "We have thrown a huge amount away. Twenty per cent of the shelf space is allocated to English plums. The rest is foreign imports.."

In spite of bumper harvests, growers are being forced to leave their crops to rot this season because multiples such as Tesco are preferring to stock imports. Two supermarkets, however, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, are leading by example and supporting British plums. See Horticulture Week which says "Domestic plum production could follow the same fate as other shrinking crops..."

September 3 2009 ~ "There doesn't need to be this confrontation all the time. They could achieve more by working with us..."

The Western Morning News quotes a West Country farmer on the news that the Government is getting DEFRA itself to carry out a review of the RPA. Anthony Rew, chairman of Devon National Farmers' Union, said: "There are a lot of problems that are mostly of the RPA's making, like this mapping fiasco. What it needed to do was to work with the industry. It could all work so much better....We need them to work in a much more customer-focused way that works with the farming community, so we get a better outcome. There doesn't need to be this confrontation all the time. .." More on the RPA page.

September 1 2009 ~ "Please can you only play cards with the person next to you and not in large groups..."

Richard Littlejohn's tone in today's Mail-, recalling the 2001 FMD crisis when, he says, the government spent "months trying to fend off calls for a full-scale public inquiry into their incompetence, such as setting fire to millions of sheep and cattle for no good reason..." - is predictable - but the article makes some serious points about the current H1N1 situation. Following criticism from GPs and others, the Swine Flu hotlines are now considerably less than busy.
... Two call centres have been closed after staff spent most of their time playing cards and board games. One operator working in Farnborough said that in a typical eight-hour shift, during the four weeks he was there, he would handle on average just two five-minute calls. .."
The World Health Organisation is not downplaying the possible seriousness if the virus mutates to become more aggressive or resistant and are hoping that every country will be willing to share results of its clinical trials of vaccine. The half-jokey, half contemptuous tone shown by Mr Littlejohn about H1N1 is not very helpful - but it is hard to disagree with his comment that "this government's knee-jerk reaction to any problem is to announce headline-grabbing gimmicks designed to give the impression that they have everything under control..." (Read article) (H1N1 updates)

September 1 2009 ~ Australia's trial of the 'vaccinate to live' policy for foot and mouth - leading the way to common sense?

It's astonishing to remember that during the all-too-real outbreak in 2007 (see archive), arrangements for possible vaccination were triggered immediately disease was confirmed on August 3 and a "Forward Vaccination Centre" was in place by 6 August. In spite of the immediate availability of the exact strain of vaccine, and to the astonishment of many (including experts at Pirbright we understand), on Day 8 (August 10th 2007) of the outbreak. the then CVO, Dr Debby Reynolds, announced :
"The decision not to vaccinate at this stage, but to retain our full readiness to do so, demonstrates that our contingency planning arrangements are working..."
Realisation that this complacency was ill-founded became apparent to all on September 12th. Infection, that would have been ring-fenced and stopped in its tracks by vaccination, re-emerged and continued to spread outwards - until the final IP(8) was confirmed on September 30th. Over 2000 animals had been slaughtered - including a heartbreakingly large number "on suspicion" or "dangerous contacts". £12.5 million was offered as compensation for animals killed but the uncompensated economic fallout right across Britain continues to be felt. The following year, Richard Drummond, Deputy Director of DEFRA's Food and Farming Group, in his Powerpoint pdf presentation to the United States Animal Health Association (USAHA) Committee on Foreign and Emerging Diseases wrote that the 2007 outbreak in Surrey had created
"Even greater pressure to consider vaccine use from outset"
"Getting rid of FMD once and for all" was a paper for warmwell.com in which Dr Roger Breeze wrote that we can control foot and mouth and the other major transboundary livestock disease threats in our lifetimes. "No new technology is needed - just the vision, the will and the resources..." It seems that it is to be Australia's role to chart Dr Breeze's "bold new course" - so woefully lacking in the Northern hemisphere. (More detail on Australia's Exercise Diva on warmwell.com's FMD pages)

September 1 2009 ~ "Vaccination to live and adaptation of the rules in the EU - and resolution of the half truths and prejudice about this infection - is a far more creative way ...."

So wrote Dr Colin Fink in October 2007 in his informed comment about vaccination to live.
One of the most interesting comments of the Callaghan Report was: "It is our view that VLA and AH, which are both Defra Agencies, do not have the necessary distance from Defra policy makers to count as arm' s length organisations." Yet the FMD Expert Group, was composed almost entirely of people from those agencies in 2007. The government now, more than ever, needs to listen to a genuinely independent Expert Group. There is top quality advice available within the EU, as well as from US counterparts with expertise in the global FMD threat from bioterrorism, which Defra could draw on. It seems that, even now, these individuals have not been consulted.

August 30 2009 ~ The spread to turkeys (Chile). Who should get priority for H1N1 vaccine now?

The danger, feared even more now that H1N1 has been shown to be able to infect turkeys, is that a new virus formed from a combination of H1N1 and H5N1, might be able to infect humans and spread from person to person. Since the surface proteins of such a novel virus will never have been in contact with the human immunology system, there will be no antibodies to fight it off. See latest on H1N1 page.

August 30 2009 ~ "they will throw the cost back to farmers, by which time it will be too late"

NBA chairman Christopher Thomas- Everard is quoted by the Western Morning News. Read in full on the TB page.

August 28 2009 ~ "Vaccinate to live" policy for Foot and Mouth is trialled in Australia's current "Exercise Diva"

A great breakthrough is being made in the current FMD exercise being carried out in Victoria, Australia. "DIVA '09" is trialling a vaccinate-to-live operational policy, as well as develop and test a comprehensive communication strategy. Their "cutting-edge" software, using GPS, takes into account farm boundaries, agricultural census and land-use information accurately to simulate a hypothetical outbreak. Recent exercises and contingency plans in the UK and US have continued to downplay vaccination and diagnosis - but in Australia, Dr Hugh Millar, the Department of Primary Industry's Biosecurity Executive Director is quoted here as saying that although culling used to be "the first and only option to stop the disease spreading" times have changed:
"..For the first time in Australia, this exercise will look at "vaccinating to live", a strategy that promotes vaccination rather than pre-emptive slaughtering of animals at direct risk from the disease. ..to keep animals alive that may have previously tested positive as a result of vaccination...."
The new technology he refers to is presumably the new DIVA test to distinguish between positive test results found in infected and vaccinated animals developed by Australia's Janine Muller last year, described here in 2008 as "inexpensive" and not requiring infectious virus to produce the reagents.
(One wonders why the oddly misleading reporting of the similar Danish research last week appeared on sites such as FMD News at UC Davis and The Cattle Site without comment . Although it is good news that the Danes are successfully carrying out work on NSP antibody detection to indicate FMD infection, the report failed to mention that differentiating tests have made far greater progress in other parts of the world than the journalist concerned seemed to realise.)
More detail about Victoria's Exercise DIVA can be seen here.

August 28 2009 ~ "The continued profligate use of Tamiflu in the treatment of mild infections may ultimately promote the expansion of Tamiflu-resistant virus.." ProMed moderator

"..since resistance is conferred by mutation at a single site in the neuraminidase gene. Fortunately, there is no evidence so far to suggest that Tamiflu resistance is spreading widely.... - Mod.CP" (URL)
ProMed has also recently reported confirmation of H1N1 in Canadian pigs ("the disease was very mild, with pigs showing only slight signs of respiratory illness..") and, in Chile, H1N1 in turkeys
"...Overall, this event should serve as a warning to agricultural and public health sectors to prepare well for the fall [2009], as the current pandemic influenza virus is active in its ability to spread across species."
We are grateful to Mary Marshall for forwarding this link to a statement via the FAO which quotes the FAO's interim Chief Veterinary Officer, Juan Lubroth, on the subject of the two Chilean turkey farms where H1N1 has been confirmed. There is no H5N1 in Chile at present, but Dr. Labroth says that the strain could "theoretically become more dangerous if it adds virulence by combining with H5N1".

August 28 2009 ~ "Increasingly", says the BVA, "the devolved administrations of the UK are pursuing different policies on animal health"

The theme of the British Veterinary Association's 2009 Congress, 24-26 September, in Cardiff will be "Together Forever?" Of particular interest is that "animal health and welfare policy is devolved in the UK and, as different approaches to bovine tb, bluetongue and the docking of dogs' tails have demonstrated, the devolved administrations are increasingly going their own separate ways. What are the advantages and disadvantages in terms of safeguarding animal health, and are the administrative, operational and budgetary structures currently in place appropriate?"
On Bovine TB the question will be posed: Where do we go from here? "With different strategies emerging in England and Wales, this session will assess the current bTB situation and take a long-term view on whether eradication is feasible and what might be realistically achieved. Speakers include Bill Swann, vet and animal welfarist and Andrew Biggs, past president WCVA and BCVA and partner in a mixed practice in Devon. " See programme in full (pdf file)

August 27 2009 ~ " too many ordinary farmers struggle to make ends meet even as the rest of us pay less for food...."

The warning in Time magazine's article on the state of food production in America is that cheap food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous, and we face "a future of eroded farmland, hollowed-out countryside, scarier germs, higher health costs- and bland taste".
As we saw with DEFRA's well-meaning recent statements, merely stating that we need to "rethink" is easier than finding comprehensive solutions. The Time article sees salvation, not in GM, but in the burgeoning local-food movement in the US, along with a hard headed realisation that
"...worldwide, organic food - a sometimes slippery term but on the whole a practice more sustainable than conventional food - is worth more than 46 billion dollars. That's still a small slice of the overall food pie, but it's growing, even in a global recession.
"There is more pent-up demand for organic than there is production," says Bill Wolf, a co-founder of the organic-food consultancy Wolf DiMatteo and Associates. (Watch TIME's video "The New Frugality: The Organic Gardener.")
A survey from the University of Michigan is quoted that suggests that transition to more sustainable, smaller-scale production methods could be possible without a loss in overall yield. Although more farm workers are required to produce sustainable food, that's hardly a bad thing at a time of growing unemployment - and at a time of growing unease about the consequences of "bankrupting the earth". Read Time article in full

August 26, 2009 ~ Emergency authorisation for the rapid PCR device, JBAIDS, to diagnose H1N1

It was a whole year ago that Dr Roger Breeze wrote:
"...It has been possible and practical to use the RAPID device to detect avian influenza virus on farm and in the field since 2000. The RAPID is sold in a small suitcase.."
Today, we read at www.medpagetoday.com not only that the JBAIDS device, Idaho's successor to RAPID, is to be used by the US military to perform rapid diagnosis of H1N1 in the field - but also that "military doctors are going to request FDA approval to use the JBAIDS device for diagnosing H5N1 avian flu".
One continues to share Dr Breeze's wry astonishment that this technology - whose effective civilian use against H5N1 by the Royal Thai Army and the US Defense Department in Thailand he described last year with such admiration - tends elsewhere to be restricted to the military. Why has it not been in use for years everywhere? Portable kits are available for the effective rapid on-site diagnosis of all dangerous animal and human pathogens for which a suitable assay has been developed - but ignorance, politics or trade considerations continue to postpone their use, it seems.

August 26 2009 ~ As seen on "Coast" - pressure-retarded osmosis technology can generate electrical energy and purify water.

A way to produce electricity cheaply and create fresh water in the process was touched on in the BBC's "Coast" Programme. Osmosis is the passage of water across a semi-permeable membrane - from low salt concentration to high salt concentration - across a salt gradient, as it were. (Roots 'suck in' water this way, of course.) The "PRO" (Pressure retarded osmosis) technology, invented at Yale in 2006, is likely to be used at locations where freshwater from a river freely mixes with seawater. The PRO process utilises this chemical energy and converts it into electricity. (More detail)
At a time of recession, energy depletion and water crisis, such technology could go some way to meet the world's needs for sustainable energy - but what happened to the UK's promising work on wave power in the 70s and early 80s?

August 26 2009 ~ Why did the Salter Duck never get into the water?

An example of an extraordinarily reliable and efficient way of getting electricity from waves was the "Salter Duck". In 2001, its inventor, Professor S H Salter of the University of Edinburgh's Department of Mechanical Engineering, submitted a memorandum to the Select Committee on Science and Technology in which he mentions the government's scrapping of wave power development in favour of wind-power in 1982. It seems likely that the enormous potential of wave power posed a threat to the nuclear industry and evidence given to the government was highly misleading, or worse. The costs of Salter's invention were miscalculated by a factor of ten, the capital cost was overestimated and the reliability of underwater cables was underestimated. According to www.marketoracle.biz, an EU report "... ridiculously claimed that each Duck would cost the about the same as the prototype had cost". Certainly, by means of what Professor Salter called "data massage", wave power in the UK missed the boat and research teams were disbanded. The nuclear industry was able to continue unchallenged.

August 25 2009 ~ "You could run continents with this sort of power...."

In 1988 Professor Salter wrote to the House of Lords committee on renewable energy
"We must stop using grossly different assessment methods in a rat race between technologies at widely differing stages of their development. We must find a way of reporting accurate results to decision makers and have decision makers with enough technical knowledge to spot data massage if it occurs...."
According to this 2007 article, Professor Salter still remains convinced that "you could run continents with this sort of power"
"...The long-term dream for the Duck stream is that you run a long line of them from the Hebrides down to the west coast of Ireland, with a break to allow shipping through, then you build out from Cape Wrath [the most westerly point on the northern coast of Scotland], past the Faroes and all the way to Iceland. You can use hydroelectrics and the Icelandic geothermal to back that up when there aren't any waves. So you get a very high-capacity factor of wave power coming into Scotland and Norway and feeding on down into the rest of Europe . That's a really enormous resource."
What vision - compared to the piecemeal erection of windmills which, in the words of Professor James Lovelock, "won't cut it at all." No reasoned arguments against the giant turbines - whether put on grounds of scientific viability, health, (see latest research on Wind Turbine Syndrome,) safety or environmental outrage - seem to carry any weight at all.
At least the British company "Lunar Energy" and its invented underwater tidal stream turbines is expecting to supply electricity generated by tidal power to 200 000 homes by 2015 - but not in the UK. The contract is with Korea.

August 25 2009 ~ Milk production is at its lowest level for 20 years

The Farmers Guardian quotes NFU Cymru's milk board chairman, Mansel Raymond, who says that Britain is "sleepwalking into disaster".
"With more than one producer a week selling off their dairy herds, he says belated Government recognition of a threat to future food supplies had probably come too late to stop the exodus."
With the ever-increasing misery of bovine TB,with the beef industry saying that there is an urgent need to increase UK beef production (NBA report below) and with many other food producers despairing of getting a fair price from the big retailers, recent statements from DEFRA about UK food security were welcome - but well overdue. Mr Benn may have referred to a world "wake-up call with the sudden oil and food price rises" - but the sleepwalking into a food crisis appears to be continuing. As Mr Raymond says on behalf of the dairy farmers, it will take a long time to achieve security in milk and will only happen if profitability returns, allowing farmers to invest again. "Retailers have never made so much money and we need to equalise profit margins from top to bottom," he says.

August 25 2009 ~ Supermarket Ombudsman

Those who wrote to Lord Mandelson emphasising the importance of establishing a retail ombudsman have now received a reply from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The email includes a brief description of the revised Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP) and an overview of the ombudsman's role as proposed by the Competition Commission (CC) but the outcome of the plea to Lord Mandelson is still in doubt. See Ombudsman page which contains all the recent posts on the subject.

August 24 2009 ~ Doctors may refuse swine flu vaccine

The Guardian this afternoon: "Several studies suggest up to 60% of GPs would oppose being immunised because they are concerned the safety trials will be rushed.....The Department of Health played down the results..." More on our H1N1 page.

August 24 2009 ~ "Conservation Banking" - buying off those who want to say "No"?

The Sunday Times article by Tricia Holly Davis yesterday, "Objectors to wind farms to be bought off", explained how DEFRA "ministers", (or Huw Irranca Davies in particular) consider that planning objections to wind farms can be overcome by ".. financing local environmental programmes..." We understand that this buying off is known as "volunteerism" in that extraordinary version of English we can only term DEFRAspeak. The trouble is that those who 'volunteeer' may well have a range of interests that have nothing to do with the environment or the countryside - employment and money, for example.
The countryside is not "property" to be bartered with. As Caroline Cranbrook says (below) "Government must also listen and act on the advice of its parliamentary committees, scientists, engineers, technologists, economists - and local people." (windfarm page)

August 21 2009 ~ No Tamiflu for mild cases, says WHO

The World Health Organisation says healthy people who catch swine flu should not be given Tamiflu. The advice, published on the WHO website as briefing note 8, directly contradicts British policy on the issue.
"...Worldwide, most patients infected with the pandemic virus continue to experience typical influenza symptoms and fully recover within a week, even without any form of medical treatment. Healthy patients with uncomplicated illness need not be treated with antivirals."
There is also specific advice for children, pregnant women and anyone with ongoing medical conditions such as diabetes on the WHO website.
On Thursday 20th August, a letter from the microbiologist, Dr Colin Fink, was published by The Times under the heading Vaccine caution Swine flu vaccine could be a recipe for disaster. Extract
"...Completion of adequate safety trials before winter now seem unlikely. The Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, feels that giving the vaccine to pregnant women is essential because high temperature with flu may cause abortion. These pronouncements seem to be muddled thinking and a recipe for disaster. The same may be said for the widespread distribution of the antivirals Relenza and Tamiflu. Nothing will more rapidly aid a resistant flu strain to be widespread this winter. In most cases so far, this influenza is characterised by its mild nature..."
(My own case of swine flu is responding well to bed rest, Nurofen and plenty of fluids.) Recent posts on H1N1

August 2009 ~ "Science and technology must be at the heart of government policy rather than marginalised, misused or ignored."

In the August 12 edition of Country Life a letter was published that not only clearly and concisely pointed out the disadvantages of onshore wind turbines but also mentioned the NOVA project whose new wind technology may well achieve offshore what the rash of giant windmills across the most beautiful parts of Britain evidently cannot. The letter is reproduced here with the kind permission of Country Life and of the author, Caroline Cranbrook. The last paragraph echoes what so many readers and contributors to warmwell.com have been saying for several years now :
"... Government must also listen and act on the advice of its parliamentary committees, scientists, engineers, technologists, economists - and local people. Science and technology must be at the heart of government policy rather than marginalised, misused or ignored. I hope that the government will see sense and give its chief scientist a seat at the cabinet table and place science and science and technology in the cabinet office, which is where they belong."
Read the Country Life letter in full on the windfarms page.

August 2009 ~ First, do no harm: "Giving untested vaccine to pregnant women is a recipe for disaster - and Guillain-Barre syndrome is a possibility in any one"

The mass prescription of anti-virals against which there have been many expert warnings is to be followed in October by extensive use of a vaccine. The media today (Google News links) are reporting of the leaking of the letter sent by Professor Elizabeth Miller head of the HPA's Immunisation Department to senior neurologists on July 29. She warned them to be on the alert for new cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome which, she says, could be linked to the H1N1 vaccine.
The Guillain-Barre syndrome (increasing paralysis which may affect both motor and sensory nerves) is associated with some virus infections and, curiously, some vaccines which have been inadequately tested. We hear:
"The new 'flu vaccine for the pandemic strain will be given out long before safety trials are sufficient. Giving it to pregnant women ( The Chief Medical officer thinks this is essential because 'flu can cause abortion) is a recipe for disaster and Guillain-Barre syndrome is a possibility in any one. It just depends on the particular proteins in the ' dead' vaccine and their conformation."
In medical schools, students are taught "First, do no harm." In most cases the mild nature of the current flu has been its most noticed characteristic. Doing nothing is what the real experts seem to be advising. One wonders how the knee-jerk policy of the UK government and Department of Health is regarded by those who would want to see a coherent policy.

Saturday August 15 2009 ~ Science posts to go at the Institute of Food Research

The future of the Institute of Food Research at Norwich Research Park, Colney (IFR)
"... a world leader in research into harnessing food for health and controlling food-related diseases, is the only publicly funded research organisation in England dedicated to food science."
may be in jeopardy. See edp24.co.uk The two-thirds core funding provided by the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) has not been increased in line with inflation since 2005.
At a time when diet and nutrition are under the spotlight, and we have seen so many paragraphs and graphs from DEFRA this week on the subject of food security (see below) the loss of such skilled senior scientists and researchers (40 out of 180) surely reveals an extraordinary lack of policy on the part of government.
The Institute is the only publicly funded research organisation in England dedicated to food science. Public funding is, of course, increasingly difficult, which makes it all the more exasperating to read of the millions spent by DEFRA on such things as "consultants and temporary staff"

August 14 2009 ~ "The Slow Food movement encourages us to identify ourselves as co-producers, not consumers."

Slow Food UK is a non-profit organisation with more than 100,000 members in 132 countries. Its aim is to
"promote sustainable agriculture as the foundation of an alternative and more beneficial food system".
Volunteers are committed to spreading the principles of Slow Food within their communities (see map), engaging with producers, organising events and encouraging people they meet to actively become co-producers. More.

Friday August 14 2009 ~ "My strong recommendation to veterinarians is that, whatever government responsibilities might be, the profession should step into the leadership vacuum and assume greater responsibility" - Professor Philip Lowe

In the light of the "Responsibility and Cost Sharing" debate, " Unlocking Potential" is an optimistic and emotive phrase and well chosen for the interesting report on veterinary expertise in food animal production by Professor Lowe, Director of the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) Programme of the UK Research Councils. It is good to see many respected names among those who visited personally or who were interviewed (Annex 3) in the course of compiling the report.
Chapter 6: Unlocking Potential - Models for Change is particularly interesting. Extract:
"6.8 The relationship between government and the veterinary profession is complex and longstanding, but has come under strain in recent years. There is an atmosphere of mutual recrimination around the UK's patchy record in animal disease control..."
Read Chapter 6 with its recommendations in full (html) or the (85 pages) at entire pdf file on the DEFRA website.

August 13 2009 ~"Never before has it been more important for the world to generate and use agricultural knowledge, science and technology"

Under the Directorship of Professor Bob Watson, the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) co-sponsored by the FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, the World Bank and WHO appears to be a genuine and rigorous attempt to examine the role of agricultural knowledge, science and technology (AKST) "in reducing hunger and poverty, improving rural livelihoods and facilitating environmentally, socially and economically sustainable development". Its latest publication (Agriculture at a Crossroads) seems even-handed and cool in its examination of the part to be played by varous forms of genetic modification. However, an extract from the IAASTD Synthesis Report Executive Summary warns that: ".. instruments such as patents may drive up costs, restrict experimentation by the individual farmer or public researcher while also potentially undermining local practices that enhance food security and economic sustainability..."

August 13 2009 ~ "Farmers face new liabilities" says IAASTD of GM patents

The same Executive Summary takes very seriously the threat to neighbouring organic farmers, and conventional farmers who "may become liable to GM seed producers if transgenes are detected in their crops..."
Monday's statement from Hilary Benn that a 'Radical rethink' is needed on food supply included the sentence that
"If GM can make a contribution then we have a choice as a society about whether to make use of that technology..."
While not a statement of policy, this has been seized upon by some journalists (notably in the Mirror with its predictable reference to 'Frankenstein Food'.) It would be foolish to deny that genetic modification has the potential for benign uses as the IAASTD acknowledges - but many are nevertheless concerned by the power now resting in the hands of the biggest agrichemical companies.

August 13 2009 ~ "...while Monsanto has pledged not to deploy Terminator, the company has stated that this "pledge" is revocable at any time."

Another look at the way the world's leading agrichemical companies - Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, and Bayer - have bought up a substantial chunk of the world's seed supply can be read in this article by Bill Freese, a science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit group in America that supports sustainable agriculture
".....farmers can be sued for patent infringement if they save and replant seeds from their harvest, so-called second-generation seeds. In the U.S., Monsanto has pursued thousands of farmers for allegedly saving its patented Roundup Ready soybean seeds, extracting tens of millions of dollars in damages....."
Hilary Benn says more trials will need to take place in Britain before GM crops are grown by British farmers - but he also seems enthusiastic about their potential (See Farmers Guardian).

August 13 2009 ~ "Our wish to continue business as usual will probably prevent us from saving ourselves." James Lovelock

Extract from the Guardian August 9 :
"Some of the more recent green hysteria is plain wrong. I know what there is to be worried about and what not to. Flying is not a major problem, not compared with all the CO2 being given out all the time by us and our pets. Flying's only got this reputation because often greening mixes with the bad side of the left, which is to do with envy. A lot of people have closed their minds to arguments against wind farms. But they are monstrously silly! A 500-ton concrete base support and 4,000 of them needed to equal the output of one coal-burning station - how is that helping? There was a report in Der Spiegel saying that in Germany, where they've got 17,500 of the things, the amount of CO2 now being produced in the country is greater than ever."
See also windfarm pages

August 13 2009 ~ UK government "remains unprepared for peak oil" says the All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil

The recession, DEFRA's acknowledgement of the food security crisis, the loss of cheap supplies of oil, gas, coal and water - all point to a world that is changing irrevocably. Richard Heinberg's diagnosis and explanation for the current crisis is, he says
"... not for the faint of heart because, if correct, it implies that the patient is far sicker than even the most pessimistic economists are telling us.... if and when fuel shortages arise, fragile globe-spanning systems of provisioning could be disrupted, with dire effects for consumers.... Without cheap fuel for agriculture, farm production will plummet and farmers will go bankrupt - unless proactive efforts are undertaken to reform agriculture to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels.." (See also peak oil page)
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Peak Oil (APPGOPO) report, ' Tradable Energy Quotas (TEQs) : A Policy Framework for Peak Oil and Climate Change' here (pdf)co-written with The Lean Economy Connection urges the government to begin planning for energy rationing. Rob Hopkins (here) calls the TEQs scheme "A watertight proposal that deserves to be spread as widely as possible, as it is an idea of its time.."
John Hemming MP, Chairman of APPGOPO:
"The evidence is now strong that peak oil is either upon us or just over the horizon. Even the International Energy Agency accepts that an oil supply crunch seems to be on its way... "
Mr Hemming said he believed the only comprehensive and fair way to tackle the coming oil crisis is rationing by tradeable quotas otherwise consumption would have to be held back through massive price increases. (More on TEQs)

August 12 2009 ~ Sainsbury's promises to provide market for bull calves

Jack Davies in the Farmers Guardian reports that the supermarket will guarantee a market for dairy bull calves of up to 100 days old following an agreement with members of its dedicated dairy suppliers. Anglo Beef Processors (ABP) and Farmright, members of the Sainsbury's Dairy Development Group (SDDG) will be offered the scheme on a voluntary basis.
"The scheme will see bull calves integrated into the food supply chain through ABP with dairy farmers receiving a guaranteed price for the calves."
Without such agreements there is no market in the UK for bull calves not destined to be reared for beef. Although sexed semen is possible to buy ( link mended), giving a 90% chance of producing a female calf - there are still many unwanted male calves born which are still either shot at birth and the carcasses destroyed - or live exported to the misery of continental veal systems. At a time when the national beef herd is in decline (see below) this initiative from Sainsbury's will be welcome news for those able to take part.

August 12 2009 ~ Shadow Environment Secretary: "It should be a strategic priority of government to increase self-sufficiency in food, yet the Government are refusing to take the steps to make this happen."

The Farmers Guardian's round-up of the reaction of various spokesmen to DEFRA's food strategy includes this from Nick Herbert:
"They have increased the regulatory burden on British farmers; government departments continue to ignore British producers and procure foreign food, and Ministers refuse to introduce honest food labelling to benefit consumers and help support our domestic production.."
Read in full

August 12 2009 ~ Tesco will suck the marrow out of us.

Just when the penny is beginning to drop about the fragility of food supplies and Mr Benn is talking of a world "wake-up call with the sudden oil and food price rises", the very local producers and shops needed to provide fresh British food are menaced more and more by the superstores who, as we see, balk at the idea of a fair play ombudsman.What happens when their power holds sole sway? As Tesco gets stronger and stronger, it seems to be targeting small market towns - Louth, Malton, Halesworth (population 5 - 6,000 and a 22,500 sq ft store planned).
They will succeed in wiping out almost all the small food shops - and of course the producers and wholesalers who supply them. George Monbiot in the Guardian today :
"...Towns are hit especially hard where supermarkets 'are disproportionately large compared with the size of the centre'... the superstore becomes the new town centre, leaving the high street to shrivel...everything that is special and precious and distinctive about this town - the quirky shops, the UK's oldest farmers' market, the busy community - falls under its shadow. Tesco will suck the marrow out of us. .."
Read in full

August 11/12 2009 ~ "Urgent need to increase UK beef production from 2012-2013 - says NBA

More warnings about the diminishing food supply in the UK. The National Beef Association's press release today warns that beef supplies in the country will continue to contract unless decent prices can be reached and kept stable to encourage breeders and dairy calf rearers to continue in business. The NBA warns retailers and processors that "... further pointless fluctuations in farm income will damage their own medium term earnings.. the impact of the contracting national cow herd can only be reversed if farmers are made to feel confident they will earn more from cows that produce calves than they do from selling potential breeders into the manufacturing beef market." Read press release

August 11 2009 ~ "More than just cows"

Another unfortunate result of the gap between farmers and many consumers in towns is the assumption (useful to some politicians, it seems) that because livestock farmers are breeding and rearing food animals they therefore don't care about them. While this may be sadly true of intensive producers (who cannot be called farmers at all) it is idiotic to apply this assumption to traditional farmers in Britain. Warmwell.com has just heard from one of them:
"... just geared up a new laptop to listen to Farming Today where someone from the Badger Trust is spouting that it is 'unusual' for farmers to be very fond of cows; they are not pets! This was at the end of the piece you linked to, on FCN report. (BBC Listen Again) All our breeding cattle have names. For sure all the dairy cattle did, and the very best were a whole lot more than "just cows". They were family. Arrogance."
This reminds us of what we heard from the ignorant during the worst foot and mouth crisis ever in 2001 (and continue to hear about bovine TB) -"Well all those animals would have died anyway..." - said by those with no conception of the desperation and misery suffered - indeed, overheard on one occasion spoken by David King. Breeding animals, irreplaceable hefted flocks, animals for which farmers felt respect and affection - not to mention many much loved pets - were snatched away by bureaucracy and, in the vast majority of cases, needlessly put to death in 2001. (more on the trauma that has stayed with so many of us. Concern about animal health policy continues to motivate websites such as these.)

August 10 2009 ~ calling for more domestic food production is one thing...

Felicity Lawrence in the Guardian this afternoon points out the contradictions in today's publications from DEFRA.
".. Here's the old view that our position as a trading nation allows us to source our food from an incredibly diverse global supply....yet here too is acknowledgement that the pressure of oil prices on fertiliser and transport costs, or increasing competition of scarce global water, to give just two examples, are likely to affect these global markets dramatically..."
And as the EFRA Committee Report (see below) commented in July, " Defra must recognise that calling for more domestic food production is one thing, but it cannot order that this be done.."
Valerie Elliott in the Times emphasised the likely "vegetarian" nature of the future. With several key DEFRA personnel actual vegetarians - in particular Hilary Benn and Jim Fitzpatrick - it is worrying to note the insouciance with which animal disease seems to be being viewed as no real problem for food supply. It gets a green light in the Summary chart and we read, "Evidence of disease losses shows that only minor proportions of EU and global supply are typically affected

August 10 2009 ~ DEFRA's "UK food security assessment" published today

DEFRA's publications on food security can be accessed online today. Hilary Benn can be watched on YouTube ( "It's a big challenge that we face and I look forward to working with you on it.")
The "Detailed Analysis" - a pdf file of 1.6MB (designed, developed and compiled by an interdisciplinary team of analysts in Defra's Food and Farming Group) can be seen here. Its six "themes": 1. Global availability 2. Global resource sustainability 3. UK availability and access 4. UK food chain resilience 5. Household food security 6. Safety and confidence
The UK Food Security Assessment: Summary is a single chart (pdf) indicating how DEFRA views the availability and the future security of food under the various headings. Red, amber and green symbols are used to indicate the current and likely future (10 year) position. ( Unfortunately this is very difficult to follow on screen and one needs the ability to print in A3 to read it off screen.)
Various reactions in the press can be found on Google The NFU's reaction, for example,
(Extract: "We look forward to contributing to the development of indicators for a sustainable food system but these indicators must focus on the sustainability of imported food, not just that which is domestically produced. It would make no sense to insist our production was sustainable but increasingly rely on imports that are not." is here)
Channel 4 News chooses to ask the question tonight: "Should we use more British land to grow food? It is a fundamental question about how we tackle our increasing needs, and the risks of growing prices."

August 10 2009 ~ DEFRA initiates a "Food 2030 online discussion"

http://sandbox.defra.gov.uk/food2030/
"....These web pages provide an opportunity to discuss the challenges and other issues affecting the food system. They also provide a place to discuss the shape of the future food system. Food 2030 looks both at the food we produce and consume in the UK, and how global food production can be increased in a sustainable way.
We would like to hear your views on these issues..."
And so far, thoughtful, well-informed comments seem to be in the majority. defra.gov.uk/food2030/comments

August 10 ~ Tamiflu and Relenza - ".. the findings review of seven research studies should prompt the Department of Health to reconsider its policy"

The Telegraph reports this afternoon that Dr Matthew Thompson, a GP and senior clinical scientist at Oxford University and Dr Carl Heneghan, a clinical lecturer at Oxford University, say the findings review of seven research studies should prompt the Department of Health to reconsider its policy.
"...on balance the medicine does more harm than good in otherwise healthy children, the authors said..... Dr Heneghan warned that prescribing the drugs so widely will encourage flu to become resistant to the medicine."
The "National Pandemic Flu Service" is handing out the drugs to anyone who reports having a flu-like illness and actually handed out 150,000 doses of Tamiflu in its first week.

Monday, August 10 2009 ~ "This abuse of Tamiflu is dangerous for all of us"

Both the leading article and a report in today's Independent underline, as warmwell.com too has tried to do, the "risk undermining our collective ability to cope with swine flu" by the overuse of anti-virals. More on the H1N1 page.

August 9/10 2009 ~ UK's food supplies: "the Task Force and the Sub-Committee must be used as a way of facilitating action, rather than a substitute for it"

Earlier this year the EFRA Committee asked DEFRA some questions about its role in food security, among which was:
"Could Defra supply an outline of what the Cabinet Sub-Committee on Food has been working on since it was established?"
DEFRA's reply was that
"Cabinet Office guidance has confirmed that it is not possible to disclose information about the work of Cabinet sub-committees."
EFRA's " Fourth Report 2008/09: Securing food supplies up to 2050: the challenges faced by the UK" suggests somewhat drily that the
"Sub-Committee should consider whether it can disclose any, even very basic, information - if not about its work, then at least about any work set in train as a result of its deliberations.. the Task Force and the Sub-Committee must be used as a way of facilitating action, rather than a substitute for it."
Although the Committee's report says they are "encouraged by the signs that Defra has begun to recognise the importance of UK production, as well as trade, in securing food supplies", it says that it is essential that DEFRA is able to develop and articulate this vision - "before long Defra will have to start supplying at least some of the answers". (Read in full)

August 9/10 2009 ~ The Task Force should aim to publish more information about its work and use and use modern IT-based solutions as a way of engaging with consumers and the food and farming industries.

EFRA's page of recommendations for DEFRA should be read in full. The UK government does at last seem to be waking up to the fact that food is going to be scarce and we need to be far more self sufficient - but as Rob Hopkins recently remarked, " if we wait for the government, it'll be too little, too late; if we act as individuals, it'll be too little; but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time" (See more on Transition page)

August 9/10 2009 ~ Avoiding Green Concrete

Professor Tim Lang, quoted today in the The Independent on Sunday:
"We are facing a mounting crisis in securing global food supplies, with climate change, rocketing oil prices and growing demand all placing a strain on traditional supply chains."
Hilary Benn is in search of a new Green Revolution and the Council of Food Policy Advisers that he set up at the end of last year was praised by the EFRA Committee's Report. It aims to give the Government practical advice on food policy this Summer. All the same, the fears expressed by the CPRE, Soil Association and others in The Independent on Sunday - that Britain will opt for massive single-crop farms, turning many areas of the country into monocultures dubbed "green concrete" for their impact on wildlife." - are fears that should be taken very seriously. As the 4th EFRA report says, the vision and strategy for food, for which Defra was assigned responsibility
"..should commit the UK to increasing production of those commodities which are best suited to being produced here, provided that this can be done in a sustainable way. Defra must recognise that calling for more domestic food production is one thing, but it cannot order that this be done..."
(See food security page)

August 7 2009 ~ "..there is no evidence that the cost of the ombudsman - dwarfed by the billions in profits of the supermarkets - would increase food prices.."

Two letters in the Guardian Extract:
"there is no evidence that the cost of the ombudsman - dwarfed by the billions in profits of the supermarkets - would increase food prices. ... Rather than protect consumers, the supermarkets' opposition to a watchdog is purely to protect their own profits..."
Graeme Willis from the Campaign to Protect Rural England writes, "....A fair supply chain would support the viability of small and large producers upon which many jobs in towns and the rural economy depend." See Ombudsman page

August 7 2009 ~ The Farmers Guardian urges readers to put pressure on Ministers to ensure the Competition Commission's proposal for a supermarket ombudsman comes to fruition.

The FG reports the perhaps predictable warning from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) that consumers would "lose out" from an independent retail watchdog. Their food director has called on Peter Mandelson to reject the Competition Commission's recommendations. More on warmwell's Ombudsman page. To show support for the Ombusdman scheme, go to this Farmers Guardian page. (new window)

August 7 2009 ~ suspected human case of bovine TB among staff at the Food and Environment Research Agency

The FERA agency at Woodchester Park near Stroud works on the ecology of badgers and their role in spreading bovine TB to cattle. The Gloucester Citizen reports that 30 other workers are being screened for the disease. More on the TB page
On BBC Radio 4's Farming Today programme this morning, Julia Evans gave a moving account of the human cost of bTB. Listen Again (about ten minutes in)

August 6 2009 ~ "as always, government policy holds little sway in a consulting room with an intelligent pregnant woman asking entirely sensible questions."

Fascinating insight today from an NHS doctor's blog on the subject of the telephone "swine-line" and the over-the-phone diagnosis of H1N1 and prescription of Tamiflu and Relenza. His tone, on the whole, is restrained - except when one of his patients reveals that the "illiterate, protocol-bound automata" at the end of the line have exhibited a particularly otiose interpretation of "government policy"
"When I come across "policy" like this, I reach for my revolver..."
As for the mass dishing out of anti-virals, his view is the sane one; that
"for the time being, it is mostly a mild, self-limiting illness which is best treated with fluids, rest, paracetamol or good old fashioned aspirin. We are told the "second wave" in the winter may be more serious. Who knows? I don't. The media, thank God, is getting bored, and moving on. The bankers' bonuses and Freddy Flintoff's ankles are much better copy."
nhsblogdoc.blogspot is real life blogging at its best and most interesting.

August 6 2009 ~ What does that mean when farmers can no longer save seeds? When farmers have to be consumers instead of producers?

A chilling - because so reasoned and calm - short interview on You Tube with Claire Hope Cummings - a former USDA lawyer in Carter's administration.


She says that the global agri-chemical companies now seriously threaten the livelihoods of farmers and the environment. She says their efforts have nothing to do with feeding the world; it's for more old-fashioned reasons, the pursuit of power and profit. Capitalism rewards risk but these corporations use their monopolistic power (they own two thirds of the seeds used in agriculture) to limit choice of seeds and people's ability to re-use the seeds for future harvests or conduct further breeding research. Their own risk is transferred to others while they reap the huge profits. "It's really about power, about control."

August 6 2009 ~"Organic farming is going to become seriously important as oil supplies diminish ..."

William Surman in the Farmers Guardian, in his article about the FSA report, quotes Edward Goff, an organic dairy farmer from Oswestry. (The July 09 FSA report was dismissive of the nutritional advantages of 'organic' food - more here)
"Organic farming is going to become seriously important as oil supplies diminish and prices escalate. That is why many people look to organic food. They want a sustainable system that uses less energy, less chemicals and makes better use of waste products."
The Ecologist's Editor's blog pointed out that the caveats of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine researchers used by the FSA (about the shoddy or incomplete nature of the evidence in the papers available for study) got lost in the misleading headlines about the FSA report. (recent posts on organic food production and the July 09 FSA report)

August 6 2009 ~Tamiflu-resistant cases of A(H1N1) already found in United States, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong and Japan

We have been warned (see below) that the massive use of Tamiflu is ill-advised and that it could result in the mutation of the (A)H1N1 virus. .
Reports on ProMed show that there is now a Tamiflu-resistant mutation of the virus. Cases of A(H1N1) that were resistant to the anti-viral medicine have now been found in the United States, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong and Japan.
(See Recent posts on swine flu - including Simon Jenkins' plea for common sense; ""Most confirm that the one thing not to take is Tamiflu....Scaremongering officials are leading us to lose all sense of proportion and waste resources. People should take an aspirin..") The government ordered huge amounts of the drug when they thought H5N1 avian influenza was going to be the next big epidemic. When bird flu failed to materialise in the population the Tamiflu remained unused - and the clock was ticking towards the sell-by date. Tamiflu is now distributed to vitually anyone in the UK self-diagnosing swine flu - but if there is any evidence to show that antivirals have made any difference at all to the progress of these mild cases we have not seen it or heard about it.

August 4 2009 ~Andrew George says, "The days of supermarket bullying of their smaller suppliers must now come to an end"

The MP for St. Ives and Chair of the Grocery Market Action Group has welcomed the Competition Commission's announcement but he has warned that the scheme will only be effective if the Government introduces a new Ombudsman to enforce the Code. See Ombudsman page

August 4 2009 ~"We are now left with no alternative but to set out the new Code of Practice" Competition Commission.

The Competition Commission are recommending that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) set up the Ombudsman to oversee the operation of a new code of practice. ...More details

August 4 2009 ~ Soil - not oil. "...we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake."

An article in the New York Times by Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry reminds us that unlike oil, soil "has no technological substitute - and no powerful friends in the halls of government." Their call for a 50 year Farm Bill is political - but it "transcends the farm politics we are used to. It is an issue as close to every one of us as our own stomachs." Read posting in full on food security posts

August 3 2009 ~ Peak Oil - today's Independent

The warnings of Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA), are quoted today on the Independent's front page See recent posts on oil page

August 3 2009 ~ "Peak oil is conspicious by its absence, as a result of which the Plan misses many opportunities"

Rob Hopkins' recent comments on the Government's White Paper on Energy:
(Extract) ".... this Plan is based on the assumption that economic growth is still feasible and that the cheap energy exists to make it possible, and that a gentle descent of the UK's oil dependency is possible. In this context, peak oil is a bit like the drunken ex-partner who turns up at the wedding, who everyone tries to ignore, but their being ignored doesn't mean that they aren't there, or that they aren't going to do something mortifying at some unspecified moment...."
Read in full at www.energybulletin.net and see warmwell postings on cheap oil depletion since 2004 here).

August 3 2009 ~ "Scotland is set to capitalise on its low incidence of bovine tuberculosis by applying to the EU Commission for TB-free status."

...Detailed economic assessments are now to be made by Scottish government economists before an application for TB-free status is submitted to Brussels." Read in full and see recent posts on the TB pages

August 3 2009 ~ DEFRA spent half a billion pounds on consultants and temporary staff in one year

Many now share the microbiologist Dr Colin Fink's view that
"DEFRA and the HPA microbiology are parallel institutions which no longer are effective nor are they economic and they need radical reform. Maybe economic pressure may allow an external view to be useful?"
We now learn from Farmers Weekly that DEFRA spent more than half a billion pounds on consultants and temporary staff (a proportion of the pay given to such staff goes straight to their recruitment agencies) in just one year (2007-2008) to help the RPA sort out farmers' single payments. (recent posts on the RPA)

August 3 2009 ~ 33 percent of H1N1 patients "asymptomatic"?

A comment on ProMed today from Dr. Steve Berger of the Tel Aviv Medical Center says that if so many of those infected with swine flu show no symptoms, then
"much of the current approach to reporting and containment will have to be revised.
Screening in airports, emergency rooms, etc., begins with the assumption of a febrile patient. Infection without overt signs will be neither reported nor restricted, and could presumably promote spread of the virus to others..."
More - and see warmwell posts onH1N1 (Swine Flu) since April (new window).

August 3 2009 ~"We do not want restrictions that choke the industry and don't benefit disease control" Professor Tim Morris on African Horse Sickness

Research into the "financial and logistical impact" if there were to be an outbreak of African Horse Sickness (AHS), commissioned by the UK horse industry's AHS Working Group will, it is hoped, help bring about an effective vaccine against the killer horse disease. More on the AHS pages.

August 3 2009 ~ West Nile virus confirmed in Italy

The Italian Government has confirmed the first case of West Nile virus (WNV) in a horse this year in Correggio - about 60 km from Ferrara, the source of the 2008 outbreak which affected about 70 horses and two humans. This new case has appeared six weeks earlier in the season than last year's outbreak and confirms that WNV is endemic to Italy. The mortality rate can be as high as 40%. See also below

August 2 2009 ~ FSA report: The Ecologist calls for more rigorous research in the field of food science

The Ecologist's Editor's blog, defending the researchers at the London School of of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), points out that their caveats (about the shoddy or incomplete nature of the evidence in the papers studied) got lost in the misleading headlines about the FSA report. Extract:
"... The LSHTM researchers conclude, quite rightly: 'It should be noted that these conclusions relate to the evidence base currently available, which contains limitations in the design and in the comparability of studies this scattered evidence indicates a need for further high-quality research in this field..."
The message in the media was that the FSA was telling consumers that organic food has no nutritional advantages, Mark Anslow concludes his article: "What those newsstands should read is: "Buck Your Ideas Up, Food Scientists - There's Work To Be Done".

August 2 2009 ~ "a society that has systematically hewed its inhabitants away from the natural world"

"The green movement's fixation with technology reveals that we are asking the wrong questions," wrote Paul Kingsnorth in yesterday's Guardian.
".....the challenge posed by climate change is not really about technology. It is not even about carbon. It is about a society that has systematically hewed its inhabitants away from the natural world, and turned that world into a resource. It is about a society that imagines it operates in a bubble; that it can keep growing in a finite world, forever.
When we clamour for more wind-power stations in the wilderness, we perhaps think we are helping to slow this machine, but we are actually helping to power it. We are still promoting, perhaps unintentionally, the familiar mantras of industrial civilisation: growth can continue forever; technological gigantism will save us; our lives can go on much as they always have..."
Recent posts on the contentious issue of wind power here.

August 1 2009 ~ Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, is urged to "revisit the decision to phase out Plum Island"

The GAO study says, "Given the significant limitations in DHS's analyses that we found, the conclusion that FMD (Foot and Mouth Disease) work can be done as safely on the mainland as on Plum Island is not supported." www.newsday.com quotes congressman Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) who has written to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: "This study underscores the validity of why Plum Island was originally chosen. I'm sobered by this report."
A Homeland Security spokesman did not return a call for comment. Read in full
See also the warmwell page (new window) updated since May 2008 on the concern felt at moving the US National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility from Plum Island.

July 31 2009 ~ If DEFRA were acting on scientific principles it would authorise TB testing of badgers in 'clean' areas

Bob Spink (Hansard) asked the DEFRA Secretary "how many farms in (a) Essex and (b) the East of England were under bovine tuberculosis restrictions on the latest date for which figures are available." [288111] Jim Fitzpatrick replied that
"DEFRA cannot provide the information in the format requested. DEFRA collects data on the number of herds under restriction because TB measures apply to a herd and not a farm. We can provide the latest data from Vetnet (1 June) which shows that the number of herds under bovine TB restrictions on 31 March 2009 was (a) 19 herds in Essex, and (b) 636 herds in the East of England region.

Note:
Data downloaded from the Vetnet system is provisional and subject to change as more data becomes available."
Bob Spink's question was, of course, seeking information about the spread of bTB into "clean" areas. In order to establish the incidence of the infection in the wild, any ministry acting on scientific and veterinary principles would authorise TB testing of badgers in such areas as a matter of urgency. Instead, we get this rather less than satisfactory answer. Is any testing of badgers being done? The answer suggests not.

Friday July 31 2009 ~ Food Standards Agency report ignored the latest study into organic food.

The Soil Association criticises the FSA review for rejecting almost all of the existing studies that compare the two food types. The report in www.hortweek.com suggests that the Food Standards Agency review, carried out by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, used no new empirical research but was compiled by looking at old papers from the last 50 years up to 2008. The latest EU study produced at a cost of 18 million euros and which ended in April 2009, found that "levels of a range of nutritionally desirable compounds were shown to be higher in organic crops".
(The Daily Mail's article today is even more scathing: "... If it has any genuine interest in nutrition, the Food Standards Agency would be supporting a shift away from intensification, not pushing for more of it.The FSA was meant to be an organisation for improving our food. Now it is just getting in the way.")

July 29 2009 ~ The Food Standards Agency findings on organic food "selective in the extreme."

Once again, the FSA is again attacking the idea that organic food is best. The Guardian reports this evening on an FSA report into organic food which, says Peter Melchett, "..rejected almost all of the existing studies of comparisons between organic and non-organic nutritional differences." Carlo Leifert, a professor of ecological agriculture at Newcastle University whose major EU-funded study involved 31 research and university institutes, said he was worried about the FSA's conclusions.
"... they are so blocked by not wanting to say positive things about organic farming. the conclusions of the study were selective."
The EU study found nutrient levels were higher in organic foods. Head of the FSA until April 2005 was John Krebs, (another member of the same group, so influential in 2001 that included Roy Anderson and David King.) In 2003, organisations including the National Federation of Women's Institutes and Unison wrote to Sir John expressing deep concern at the pro-GM bias and anti organic stance of the FSA. In 2005, the FSA's continuing attacks on organic farming were mentioned as cause for concern on page 15 of the Dean Review, a report compiled by Baroness Dean. The agency had, "deviated from its normal stance of making statements based solely on scientific evidence, to giving the impression of speaking against organic food and for GM food"

July 30 2009 ~ Thousands of pounds worth of black market meat

Stinking bags full of sheep's carcasses and heads have been found in Enfield- stolen sheep, illegally slaughtered, and transported in unrefrigerated vans- as this BBC video shows. The trade in 'smokies' appears to be continuing unabated. What is certain is that the profits made by such trafficking are so great that thousands are being spent by the criminals to evade justice. It is believed the meat had been destined for shops serving West African customers. The van, discovered by police in Enfield because of the smell, (the BBC reporter staggers back when shown the van by Enfiled's Chief Environmental Officer), contained bags of smokies. A sheep head from a smokie can fetch 50 pounds in African butchers in London. There are links, says the BBC, between the Enfield van and Mid Wales. The owner of the van is in court on Thursday on similar charges. (Dirty Meat page)

July 29 2009 ~ "... reared naturally with very high welfare standards"

localfoodadvisor.com lists over 1000 meat suppliers including all the top award winning producers, farm shops, specialist producers and butchers. Meat includes beef, pork, lamb, cured meats, sausages, etc but excludes game and venison. Consumers can find local farmers' markets, local organic produce and the sort of quality they want by entering their postcode, while farmers who raise high quality produce can apply to get themselves listed on the website. The top 4000 award-winning suppliers in the UK and Ireland - all of whom have won major awards - are listed free. So far, the site is attracting 160,000 visitors a month.

July 27 2009 ~ £100 million investment for Pirbright

The BBC's Pallab Ghosh reports that Pirbright's director, Martin Shirley, says that the new investment of £100m will enable him to build laboratories that "meet the highest standards of biosecurity".
The Select Committee on Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills, Sixth Report (2008), Section 5 said:
"The Government has a particular responsibility in this regard. UK research laboratories should be maintained by their operators to a high, internationally acceptable standard. ..." Read in full
However, the response of February 2009 to the Anderson Review (pdf) showed that DEFRA was not intending to take the financial lead in any transformation of Pirbright. (see also FG in February) Farming UK suggests the investment is coming from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) - presumably following a successful business plan from the BBSRC.
UPDATE The Farmers Guardian: "redevelopment will constitute a Government investment ... £92m of which will come from the Large Facilities Capital Fund, with the remainder from BBSRC's capital allocation."

July 27 2009 ~ Professor Roy Anderson's "clear conflict of interest"

The NHS signed contracts earlier this year with pharmaceutical companies Roche, which makes Tamiflu, and GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Relenza, bringing the UK's total capacity to 33.5 million treatment courses. Concerns about links between advisory committees, pharmaceutical companies and research grants have been voiced for many years now (According to the Guardian in September 2001, it was Nestlé not the NFU, that persuaded Tony Blair to halt the already advanced foot and mouth vaccination preparations.) As for advisory committees, it was in 2003, that Michael Meacher told The Observer:
".. I constantly argued that nobody with significant commercial links should be allowed to sit on these bodies. It is vital they are truly independent."
Professor Roy Anderson's links with industry are well known - and we learn from today's Mail that the egregious Professor has been asked to step down from "SAGE", the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, because of his financial association with GlaxoSmithKline. In May, he was interviewed on the Today programme and called for the distribution of anti flu drugs "we have two effective anti-viral drugs.." - but there was no mention of the fact that he receives annual payments from GlaxoSmithKline. He earned £116,000 at GSK last year.
The danger of the overuse of antivirals - as we were warned below - is that it actually can bring about a drug resistant strain of the virus - and a far more serious situation than the present one.

July 27 2009 ~ The Department of Homeland Security "relied on a rushed, flawed study" to move FMD research from Plum Island to Kansas, says the GAO

The Washington Post today reveals that the Government Accountability Office's study says that the US Department of Homeland Security's analysis was not "scientifically defensible". In its draft report, the GAO, the congressional watchdog, says that the DHS's review was too "limited" and "inadequate" to decide that any mainland labs were safe, adding that the agency's assessment of the risk of accidental release of toxins on mainland locations, including Kansas, was based on "unrepresentative accident scenarios," "outdated modeling" and "inadequate" information about the sites. UPDATE A Kansas farmer writes to warmwell.com today that the real livestock producers of Kansas were never given much opportunity to make known their own concerns to the Governor's Task Force:"..in fact, they were purposefully omitted from that group..." (read in full)
July 28 2009 ~ Google news results for today's news items on this subject.

July 27 2009 ~ killing the victim rather than the aggressor

A concerned veterinary surgeon, deeply disturbed by the section of the Farm Crisis Network on TB highlighted below, wrote to remind us that the mass slaughter of animals during the Foot and Mouth disease epidemic of 2001 took place at a time when many animals, especially sheep, were in the late stages of gestation. "It was obvious that the methods used to kill the mother condemned the foetus to a relatively slow death," and continued:
"... Yet we now learn that no specific measures are adopted to humanely kill the late stage foetus of pregnant cattle slaughtered as bovine 'reactors' .
Defra disease control policies, as those of MAFF in 2001, continue to be heavily dependent on killing the host rather than the causative agent and, whilst many scientists might question the logic of this approach, none would doubt that slaughter of both the mother AND the late term foetus must be carried out humanely."
The 39 page Farm Crisis Network report on TB can be downloaded here ( file size is 1.12MB.)

Monday July 27 2009 ~ IUSS report - A caveat

The Commons "Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills" Committee's report on science in government policy (see below or pdf file) recommends that scientific advice should be independent, readily available and its use (or its disregard) be acknowledged by policy makers. A caveat should perhaps be added about the quality of the scientific advice that informs policy. When David King appeared before the IUSS Committee in 2007 he explained:
"..to take foot and mouth disease, as a chemical physicist I was fairly far removed from virology and epidemiology.... when I am talking virology and epidemiology there is no prior history that I come in with..."
We therefore read with some concern the assertion on Page 7 that "Sir David King, maintained a close relationship with the Prime Minister, providing crucial expert advice during the foot and mouth crisis"
In the words of a well informed reader:
"How could a surface chemist with no knowledge of foot and mouth disease - and little inclination to learn about the disease - be allowed to influence policy when world experts on foot and mouth disease were available and willing to help?"
One such expert, Dr Alex Donaldson, told the Lessons Learned Inquiry:
"....The epidemic had been in decline by the time of the introduction of the contiguous cull policy on 29 March. .."
Yet the policy put in place after this date and so heavily influenced by Sir David King's "crucial expert advice", resulted, as a letter in the Veterinary Record Aug 5 2006 makes clear, in the unnecessary involvement of over 7200 premises, the unnecessary slaughter of at least 3.35 million animals (52 per cent of all recorded slaughters),and an excess cost of at least £1700 million (62 per cent of the declared net cost to the UK taxpayer) More

July 25 2009 ~ Independence of scientific advice is compromised "It is no good having advisors if they are not listened to"

The report by the Commons Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee (IUSS) says that Government departments should be exposed by their own scientific advisers when their decisions are based not on the findings of research but on political considerations. A major problem, it says, is the lack of access for scientific advisors to the cabinet office. The Times reported yesterday that "Putting Science and Engineering at the Heart of Government Policy",(here), says that scientific advisory committees commissioned by the Government should be truly independent. Unfortunately, says the report, independence is "compromised by the way their findings are publicised through the press offices of Whitehall departments." The Committee's chairman, Phil Willis, said of government policymakers : "We do have a problem with claiming there's evidence they don't have; a research base that a policy doesn't have....Where there is no evidence, this should be acknowledged, and efforts should be made to find evidence."  
Readers of this website may well remember with a shudder statements made about foot and mouth policy in 2001. In May of that year, when it began to emerge just how many of the supposedly "confirmed" cases were showing up as negative in Pirbright tests, MAFF had retorted, "We have acted on the best scientific advice throughout" (Independent).

July 25 2009 "We would like to reiterate our commitment to evidence-based policy-making and to the importance of embedding independent scientific advice into the policy-making process... "

The response of the spokesman for the Government Office of Science to the report above is couched in the sort of GovernmentSpeak that one has come to expect and dread. Witnesses at the Public Administration Select Committee's recent investigation into "Official language" (see video) had much to say about such language.
(Incidentally, it was cheering at that meeting on July 9th to hear Professor David Crystal defending the succinct and punchy use of Twitter by the politically literate and, as many of us have found, its non-trivial usefulness. )

July 25 2009 ~ In India, the prices of edible oils, vegetables, rice, wheat and other food items have been increasing without respite.

The global recession has forced up to 90 million more people into extreme poverty. Ordinary people in India are finding it very difficult to buy the basic essentials. newkerala.com reports that price rises have also been fuelled by the hike in the price of petrol and diesel. Left wing partiies want the Delhi government to provide pulses and edible oils at subsidised rates through the Public Distribution System (PDS). A joint statement from the Left parties says that drought is expected in many states as a result of deficient rainfall - and this would further put pressure on the prices of food items.

July 24 2009 ~ bTB - The Farm Crisis Network has just produced a report on the human cost of bovine TB

A copy of the 39 page report can be downloaded here ( file size is 1.12MB.) Extract:
"The worst thing was that cows very close to calving had to be shot on farm. We could see the calves kicking inside as they died....I feel there is a constant dark cloud of uncertainty over me, causing stress, anxiety and fear. I feel weary, mentally and physically which results in pain in my body.....Financially it is very stressful. Cash flow is a huge problem. Having to keep animals when I would normally sell them puts more pressure on me, on my family, animal accommodation and feed costs. I don't know how long we can keep going...."
The interviews were carried out by FCN volunteers in three areas - West Wales, the South West and Worcestershire - all bovine TB hotspots. (warmwell TB page)

July 24 2009 ~ West Nile Virus vaccine developed and launched in the UK

ProMed reported in error that a wild crow in the UK had been found with WNV. In fact, the bird was in Canada, where WNV is endemic, as ProMed now tells us.
However, Fort Dodge in the UK has developed and launched the first vaccine for the disease so it is now, at least, something that horse owners can protect their horses against. Horses in the UK's Carriage Driving Championship Team recently became the first horses in the country to be vaccinated as they're heading to Hungary for the World Championships next month. There is no cure for West