Back to the Drawing Board - 2

Hard on the heels of Defra's August 4th. revamp of Compulsory Purchase arrangements for Reactor cattle comes yet another change.

Announced on the Defra website 31/10/04 under 'What's New' section is the draft of a Statutory Instrument which will revoke all previous SI's dealing with cattle compensatipon for Tb, brucellosis and EBL, and BSE.

Defra's explanantion notes are predictable:
"The trend is + 18 percent per year"
(But our Ben has told Parliament it was down 14 percent???)

"The Tb budget was £89 million in 2003 / 04"
(It didn't need to be, see Beneficial Crisis etc. on this site)

"Government is determined to tackle the problem..."
(When?)

So our Dan - Mr. Hackett the Compensation Accountant has come up with a cunning plan, now outlined on the Defra site and in the new draft SI.

Bog standard market value for ALL cattle + a few brownie points for 'enhancement banding'.

And that's it.

The site explains that a Reading University report has found that 23 percent of dairy farms and 35 percent of beef farms actually made a net profit from being under restriction. How they arrived at that little gem is not explained, and the state of farm accounts for the other 70 - 80 percent of farms in their survey, is not explored either. We've listed some of the 'benefits of restriction' on this site but obviously Reading did not take those into account.

As far as we (and the valuers) can see at the moment - and we will stand corrected should we be proved wrong - the new system will take Compulsory purcahse back to the days of the 1980's when this system operated and the farmer was expected to add insurance if he felt that his herd warranted 'enhancement'. No valuers.

The difference now of course is that our Minister for Doing Nothing, has made cattle farmers uninsurable - for Tb at least. "Exposure to risk is too great" as the man from the Pru said.

So bog standard market value it is folks. The average of cattle of that age, sold through local markets in the previous month. A few points (££'s) for pedigree, more for age and state of pregnancy and extra for milk/beef recording schemes. And no valuers for high genetic merit pedigree stock.

And some seriously undervalued cattle.