Click here to search commentonline

From The Wellies - January 08

The only ploughs operating on Highland Perthshire farms over the holidays have been snowploughs, busy keeping roads and driveways clear. 

 The festive snow arrived just too late for Christmas but did allow some good sledging and snowman building in the school holidays.  The main Scottish ski centres now seem to be up and running and will be hoping for a colder spell to ensure that the snow stays around. 

Not the weather that farmers want, deep snow has meant that outwintered sheep have needed extra feed in the form of hay or silage.

* * * *

Most of you welcomed visitors over the holiday period.  One farm near Kirkcudbright has, however, had a very unwelcome guest in the form of the Bluetongue virus. 

The virus was picked up in a routine post-movement test, carried out on a batch of 35 dairy heifers were imported from a farm near Bremen in Germany, for the Scottish Government by the Animal Health Agency. 

The infected animal has been culled and was deemed to have the virus when it arrived in the country.  As we are in mid-winter and it is too cold for the midge, which spreads the virus to survive, we are deemed to be in a ‘vector free’ period, which means we don’t lose our ‘Bluetongue Free’ area status. 

* * * *

While the arrival of the Bluetongue virus is very unwelcome, this one isolated case should hopefully act as a wake up call to anyone else considering bringing animals into the country.  Most people looking in at the agricultural industry must question the sanity of any farmer who imports stock from any area of Europe which has suffered from the Bluetongue virus. 

The reason for import being given in this particular case is the upturn in the fortunes of the dairy industry and the shortage of suitable youngstock in the UK.  There are no restrictions in place at the moment to stop the same thing happening again.  Any national restrictions on importing livestock have to come from the UK Government and get EU approval - don’t hold your breath waiting for that one to happy quickly then! 

Each incident such as foot and mouth or Bluetongue has more and more Scottish farmers asking for the Scottish Government to have more powers to take decisions in Holyrood, which would benefit Scottish agriculture rather than having to go cap-in-hand to Westminster. 

In the meantime, we can only hope that the one-off Bluetongue case acts as a wake-up call to everyone.

* * * *

Sales figures from the Scottish Butchers’ Club in the run up to the festive season kept up very well, with many shops reporting record levels of orders.  Everything from beef welllington, marinated legs of lamb and peppered beef roasts were reported to be selling well. 

All the butcher shops which are members of the club, as well as stocking top quality Scotch beef, lamb and pork, also carry the full range of promotional material and recipe cards, developed by Quality Meat Scotland. 

If you are a fan of the ‘Glen’ adverts on television and fancy some of the recipes, the cards and all the cuts of meat are available all year round, so please remember that your local butcher is not just for Christmas, he is there all year round to cater for your every carnivorous need!