Over The Gate By Jeff Swift (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Over The Gate By Jeff Swift

9:30am Friday 16th November 2001 in

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WE KEEP hearing pronounce-ments from DEFRA ministers that farming has to change.

I've got news for them; farming has seen a good many changes in my lifetime and a good many more in the lifetime of people who go back a lot further than me.

So when these ministers of great experience and great vision keep mentioning this change, and I readily concede that only people of vision coupled with experience can really say with any authority what these changes could be.

Would they not care to be a bit more specific and say exactly what they want us farmers to do? That is always supposing they really do want farmers in future.

It is no good re-hearsing jargon like `sustainable' and `reach-ing full potential'.

When farmers invested capital and effort to increase production a howl went up saying farming was too intensive.

So now we can all look forward to Margaret Beckett telling us how farming can reach its full potential without being intensive; if not it looks rather like that vision and experience might be missing.

Farmers have always been willing to put their money where their mouth is, but you cannot blame them for drawing the line at putting their money where someone else's mouth is.

Come on ministers, surprise me and tell us the way forward for British Agriculture.

You say you want a strong, vibrant agriculture, well you could have fooled me; so come on show me how wrong I have been.

You may remember I told you about the government taking powers to seize one's cattle and sheep with no right of appeal.

If that would not mean we were living in a police state, well you could have fooled me.

I also said that what Elliott Morley (minister) would be better doing, was adopting the test for foot-and-mouth disease perfected by Professor Fred Brown of the United States Research Centre at Plum Island.

This test gives you a result in 2-3 hours.

It was developed by the United States but the British government refused to take it on board, and there was me thinking Tony Blair had every confidence in America.

After the absurd blunder where scientists were carrying out research to determine if BSE was present in sheep and DNA tests discovered the brains being tested were not sheep brains at all but were in fact cattle brains, I now read that a leading scientist not only condemned DEFRA but also claimed there was a test in existence which could have quickly told them if there was BSE in the national sheep flock or not.

The ministry knew about the test in 1996.

Was it the cost that put the ministers off? I think not, for the cost was £20 per sheep tested.

Now for the shock, and it certainly shocked me, the cost of the test that was used, wait for it, was £30,000 (thirty thousand pounds) per sheep and they tested 180.

The tests apparently involved the scientists in going through two generations of mice.

Should research be put out to tender in the private sector? As ever I'm saying nowt, but it makes you think.

Dialect word: Smoot or Smuft meaning a small hole in a wall.

Thought for the day: Them as doesn't know, shouldn't say.

They might, appen, praps, be wrang.