It's at times like this that I'm glad I'm no longer a livestock farmer. How on earth do you deal with EU regulations that allow livestock movement one day and then, with no further spread of disease, prohibits it the next. If it were as simple as that farmers might be able to get to grips with it in time. But its much more complicated to the point of virtual unintelligibility - if there is such a word.
After getting it wrong once it's easy to understand officials don't want to make the same mistake again. And everyone wants to avoid a repetition. But its five weeks since the last case of F&M for goodness sake and even more to the point, the feed situation on some farms is getting desparate, never mind the cash flow. How much longer must the affected areas suffer especially now they are becoming aware of DEFRA's parsimonious attitude to proper compensation?
What makes all this so unreasonable is the double standards the EU appears to use when dealing with Brazil. It has just been announced that an investigation by the EU itself has revealed that Brazil has no systematic audit system for animal health at either state or national level; that there is no programme to monitor F&M vaccination; that the reliability of records on where animals have been for the 90 days before slaughter and export is, to say the least, questionable; furthermore, that animals ineligible for export have been exported.
But with this report in its hands and almost in the same breath as it imposed still more restrictions on UK animal movements, the EU has still failed to ban imports of beef from Brazil.
Yes, it beggars belief. After all UK livestock farmers have been through, in 2001 and again this year, the official EU line seems to be - regulate domestic producers out of existence but let other countries do whatever they want. What other interpretation can there be?
If I were a livestock farmer I would be creating merry hell with my MEP over such duplicitousness. I shall be disappointed if those who do keep cattle and sheep do not do so in any case. They will have my full support.