Originally from: Natalie
                        
Unfortunately this piece from yesterday's Western Morning News is not on line but it is about a challenge to the Government's decision to blame pigswill for spreading foot and mouth.......

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Farmers in the Westcountry, who lost out so badly during the fmd crisis last year are backing the action which seeks to show that Ministers misled the House of Commons about a consultation exercise designed to gauge support for plans to ban the feeding of catering waste to pigs.

The then Agriculture Minister, Nick Brown told the Commons at the height of the outbreak in spring last year that the consultation exercise on whether or not swill be banned had received 150 responses of which "nearly all" favoured a ban.

On that basis the Government's decision to outlaw pigswill production – and its readiness to use those who produced and fed the swill as a scapegoat for the spread of foot and mouth – was easily justified.

But now the grounds on which those assumptions were reached is looking decidedly shaky and there is pressure for an inquiry and a legal challenge to get at the truth. There may or may not be a perfectly sensible explanation for why Mr. Brown told the House of Commons "nearly all" the 150 respondents to the consultation favoured a pigswill ban.

But given that evidence now suggests the 351 responses were actually received, with 109 supporting a ban, 132 objecting to it and 110 failing to express a preference, that explanation needs to be tested.

And the answer given to the Western Morning News this weekend by DEFRA – the successor department to the Ministry of Agriculture – fails to adequately provide the answer.

The suggestion by the DEFRA spokesman that the 110 who showed no preference were consider to be in favour of a ban simply defies logic. On that basis everyone who spoilt their ballot paper – or even failed to turn up to vote at an election – could be considered to be supporting the Government.

That is not democratic.