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A friend dropped in for some photocopying the other day. He had a stack of complicated forms which are necessary for farmers to claim refunds from the Government for cattle being slaughtered because they might have BSE.
He told me a story which is a bit worrying. Go back a few years to the time when West Germany came into possession of East Germany. East Germany, whilst having a lot of worn out industrial plants, is really a gigantic farm. So once the farming efficiency has been improved a bit they will be producing more food into a Europe which has too much already.
Come forward now to about two years ago - that is about a year before the BSE scare really started and the bans on British beef were instituted. German farms like to keep beef bulls over an extra winter because they get an extra subsidy when they do this. The problem is that the meat is not then so good as bulls slaughtered in the autumn. They were selling a lot of these elderly bulls to Italy. Along came the nasty Brits, who offered autumn slaughtered bulls for the same price. These ate much better and we got the business.
Back came the Germans wanting to know why their Italian customers had stopped buying their elderly bulls. When it was all explained they said:
"British beef will be unobtainable in a year's time"
How did they know?
What the Germans do know is that British Agriculture is amongst the most efficient in the world. So we are a serious impediment to them being able to sell the eventual output of East Germany. With the increasing demands for food from the Pacific rim countries, this is BIG business.
Draw your own conclusions!
