Defra to appeal Tabular Valuation ruling

Yesterday (August 4th.) Defra announced that it would appeal the decision of Lord Justice Stanley Burnton in the case brought by David Partridge. The case, heard on July 14, ruled that applying table values to high value cattle ‘offends the principle of equality’ as it discriminates against their owners without sufficient justification.

We covered the Partridge Farms case here. Cash strapped and under pressure to 'save money' this is a case Defra cannot afford to lose. Equally, the breeders of high genetic pedigree cattle cannot be expected to surrender high value animals to the altar of political expediency for a handful of what they are worth.

In an ideal world, cattle farmers should be able to obtain top-up insurance for such animals but the situation with this politically motivated plague is such that the insurance underwriters have withdrawn cover. Exposure to risk is too high the man-from-the-Pru said. And in a world where only the short term is 'valued' at all, it was ever going to be the case that while farmers were screwed had their compulsory purchase monies reduced, the bTB bandwagon would roll on with the majority - two thirds - of its budget increasing at 20 per cent annually to cope with increasing Tb 'incidents'.

In a bizarre twist to this story, we have been alerted to another anomaly within the compulsory purchase maze. While camelids, those long necked fashion-statement lawnmowers such as alpacas and llamas receive full valuations from Defra, as the spillover into other species continues, goat keepers receive nothing at all. This we are told, is the result of deals done (fishing quotas?) when the UK joined the EEC (European Economic Community). In 1972, Government undertook to exclude goats as agricultural animals and therefore any part of our agricultural economy. So when goats are found to be infected with TB, or fail an owner funded skin test there is no compensation whatsoever for reactors.