Farmers aim to ease health cash fear

SCOTTISH farming leaders will make a determined effort to resolve the current impasse on funding for animal health before the forthcoming general election.

The fear expressed by NFU Scotland president Jim McLaren yesterday is that the budget held by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will be slashed by whichever party triumphs, in an attempt to balance the UK government budget.

Defra has overall control of the UK animal health budget, but the Scottish Government is responsible for animal health programmes.

Speaking in St Andrews at the union's annual meeting, McLaren said the Defra budget had to be split up and Scotland should get its share of the animal health budget as part of a devolved package. He was determined the issue should be tackled in the next six to eight weeks, thus getting the potential conflict and loss of cash removed from the political agenda.

McLaren's views on that part of the budget came as part of a wide ranging "state of the Union" address in St Andrews. In it he also expressed his doubts about the largest farmer-owned milk cooperative in the UK.

Responding to a question from Jimmy Mitchell, convener of the union's milk committee, Mr McLaren said he still had concerns over the structure of First Milk.

He emphasised the strong assets the company had, but added: "I cannot say I think they are out of the woods yet. They still have structural problems which they have to grasp."

He advised the company to recognise the strengths it had in the market and to use them, even if that meant there might be radical changes.

On the issue of the milk price being paid by major buyers, McLaren said he hoped an ombudsman would consider the matter as a priority.

He then took a swipe at the high level of regulation facing the agricultural industry, using as an example the European Union's attitude to animal transport. McLaren claimed that Scottish livestock producers were being penalised on this issue when the real culprits were hauliers moving horses in southern Europe.

On the electronic identification of sheep, he believed that while regulation was now in place, there was still a great deal to be done to ensure that those who make minor mistakes in their sheep counts are not penalised through their Single Farm Payments.

Some farmers have recently questioned whether the world is really experiencing climate change and have questioned why the farming industry is being singled out as one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emission. One of those, Jim Fullarton, of Berwickshire, said he took a rather cynical view of all the publicity surrounding the issue.

However, McLaren advised farmers not to challenge the thinking behind it. He said: "The government has made its policy and agreed target reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. If I can tell you quietly, I think we have been set quite modest targets which are quite achievable."

Not only were the reductions achievable, he said, but they would also improve the efficiency of the farming industry.

One example was the eradication of bovine viral diarrhoea. It has been estimated that if this wasting disease could be eliminated from the Scottish cattle herd, there would be a reduction of 3 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions.

In commenting on the proposals with the Pack package, which are aimed at reforming the CAP, McLaren stated that he would like the union to look at a "one-off rebasing exercise." This would still get rid of those who had ceased farming in the past decade, but it would allow those who have been actively farming to benefit.

He stressed that this could only be done once and if a new base was being considered it should be a year which has already gone past so that no one could artificially increase cropping or stocking for one year in order to benefit financially over the lifetime of the reformed CAP.