Warning issued over dangers of Chinese lanterns (From Gazette & Herald)

Warning issued over dangers of Chinese lanterns

2:39pm Thursday 26th January 2012 in Farming comment By James Stephenson

FOR those who have no friends in Beijing, you may not be aware that the official Chinese New Year was on Monday and celebrations for the year of the dragon may well continue into the coming weekend.

The NFU has quite rightly issued a warning about the dangers of letting off Chinese lanterns in or near the countryside.

Not only are the lanterns, still alight, able to set stacks of straw on fire, but also the metal cages have been swallowed by cattle who subsequently die a miserable death as the metal wire is forced through the digestive system.

If you feel compelled to set off the lanterns at least ensure that they have wooden not metal frames.

I first saw them in a spectacular evening setting in Thailand and it is interesting to note that their neighbours Vietnam have proclaimed a ban as indeed have Spain and Germany.

70 per cent of Defra’s food not British

It is bizarre, and indeed reprehensible, that less than a third of the food eaten from Defra’s own purchases have British origins, as was discovered in Parliament last week.

Apparently there is some typically rigid adherence to a World Trade Organisation rule that we can require food to be up to British standards in Government procurement, but we cannot demand that it be British.

Having just been to Paris where there wasn’t a Yorkshire pudding, Lincolnshire sausage or a bottle of Bulmer’s cider in sight, I would very much doubt whether the French civil service eat anything other than that which is produced within their national borders.

With difficulty I have to admit that the French are right and we are wrong.

The message to buy British is certainly getting through to our supermarkets and it ought to be filtering down into Government circles.

Important CFE survey

In 2009 the voluntary movement known as The Campaign for the Farmed Environment (CFE) was launched in order to prevent the introduction of yet another raft of bureaucratic regulation to control our countryside.

Now more than two years down the line, Defra is about to send out a survey to 5,500 farmers chosen at random.

For our own good, which is the very best incentive, we need to complete the form if we are selected, to demonstrate that we are capable of managing the environment for everyone’s benefit.

We basically have two ways of doing this – either by signing up to the Entry Level Scheme or the Higher Level Scheme which will give us payment in return for management; or we can achieve the same ends by doing this voluntarily without the red tape attached.

The purpose of this message is to ask you to return the form if you get it.

Wheat trade stable despite Euro crisis

Ten days ago we saw Standards and Poor downgrade seven European countries, including La Belle France, negotiations in Greece were faltering and the IMF was looking to raise a further 500 billion dollars for its funds.

All this should have spooked the markets but remarkably it didn’t.

Wheat has remained either side of £150 per tonne, with barley close behind and OSR £355 per tonne.

What the future holds is anyone’s guess but poor South American weather seems to be underpinning the trade.

New midge-borne disease in East Anglia

Only last year we were officially declared to be free of bluetongue and it comes as a shock that another new disease has managed to cross the Channel on the wings of a midge.

The new infection is called the Schmallenberg virus and first appeared in cattle on the Continent last August.

The virus causes fever, reduced milk, loss of appetite and body condition and more recently abortion and stillbirths although these are mainly in sheep.

Individual affected animals tend to recover after several days; and although not notifiable the disease does want reporting so that we keep track of it.