Rip Up Red Tape gathers speed

FW’s Rip Up Red Tape campaign continues to gather momentum, with dozens of farmers sending us suggestions of regulations they’d like to scrap.

Last month we asked farmers to tell us which rules and regulations they find pointless, unfair or unduly bureaucratic and the community has been quick to respond.

One FWispace user told us he would do away with the Red Tractor scheme, criticising the panel responsible for “gold-plating the existing rules while dreaming up more and more new ones each year”, to the detriment of small- and medium-sized businesses.

Animal transport regulations have also come under fire from several users, who place much of the blame on the EU for moving the goalposts with a collection of ever more complicated certificates and authorisations.

Waste removal, sheep EID and on-farm livestock burials are other areas of the job that have been deemed overly regulation-heavy.

“Regulation is like a huge train, going down a track, being loaded up with more and more rules,” concluded FWispace user Bovey farmer. “No one knows where the train is going or why, and more of a problem for us, no one knows how to stop it or change the direction.”

These sentiments were compounded when FW columnist Matthew Naylor approached the issue from the other side of the coin and wrote a piece in defence of farming regulations (Farmers Weekly, 20 August), provoking a flood of responses on FWi’s forums.

The Rip Up Red Tape campaign continues with an “In the Hot Seat” feature with former NFU director general Richard Macdonald in next week’s issue, and we are still inviting suggestions of red tape you’d like to scrap.

• Join the conversation on our forums or find about more about the campaign on our Rip Up Red Tape page