NFU Cymru launches campaign for Welsh Assembly elections

NFU Cymru has fired the first salvos of campaigning for the Welsh Assembly election in May.
All four main political parties were represented at the launch of the union’s Voice of Welsh Farming manifesto on an upland beef and sheep farm at Dolfach in Powys.
Dai Davies, the union’s Welsh president, warned that rural voters felt deep concern about a range of issues, including the control of bovine TB, the future of Tir Mynydd scheme support for less favoured area farms, disease cost sharing plans, the dairy sector crisis and bureaucracy.
Candidates
Voters would back candidates who understood that agriculture was the cornerstone of the rural economy, and essential for the future of communities, the landscape and the survival both Welsh culture and the language, Mr Davies said.
“TB is increasing at a rate of 18% annually and will have doubled in incidence by the next assembly elections in 2011,” he claimed.
Farmers would expect the incoming assembly to face up to the issue of removing diseased wildlife rather than continuing the approach of focusing control measures on diseased cattle.
And the assembly should not be party to attempts to foist the costs of animal disease prevention and control onto the industry, he added.
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