Category: News and events

Defra’s plans for how it intends to deliver Bluetongue BTV-8 vaccine to the nation’s anxious livestock farmers has just been revealed. They appear to rely rather a lot on crossed fingers, prayers and “flexibility”. And it now looks likely that the whole of England may well be declared a Bluetongue “Restricted Zone” by this summer.

The world’s retail organic agriculture market is worth nearly US$40 billion a year and is now produced from over 30 million hectares of land. Australia has by far the largest organic production area (12.3 million hectares).

The Government’s current method of controlling cattle TB – surveillance, testing and slaughter – is not working effectively. That is the conclusion of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) select committee in its report Badgers and cattle TB, published on February 27th.

A new, independent report, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, has concluded that the majority of bovine tuberculosis spread in high-risk areas is a result of badger-to-cattle interaction.

The “Jamie Oliver” effect, resulting from the screening of the TV show Jamie’s Fowl Dinners, is seeing supermarkets suffering shortages of free range and organic chicken, reports the Daily Mail.

Cash for farmers to leave land uncultivated as wildlife habitat (set-aside) in on its way back into UK farm policy

GM maize edges out organic production in Spain.

Seeds from some genetically modified crops can endure in soil for at least 10 years. That’s the finding of Swedish scientists who examined a field, originally planted with experimental oilseed rape a decade ago, and found transgenic specimens were still growing there.

Horse power on Iain Tolhurst’s holding