Originally from: Pat Gardiner
                        
Pat's Comments: I get plenty of stick along the lines of:

 "Yes that's true, but if you say it, it will damage the pig industry."

Nothing I ever say does the tiniest part of the damage that Maff-Defra, its vets and the industry organisations do to the industry.

For once, I want to switch to the latest salmonella scare on eggs and point out the idiocy of the behaviour of the Food Standards Agency.

I'm making the generous, but not necessarily justified assumption that the figures relating to British eggs are correct.

The EU has gathered some figures together on the relative infection rates on their respective members farms.

Bearing in mind the past record of some of them, I can well imagine that they will be under reporting the scale of the problem.

Anyway, the EU produced a draft report for publication this autumn. Even if the figures are dodgy, there is obviously a serious potential human health problem which has to be dealt with.

It is not the end of the world for poultry farming although in their weakened condition, it is not good news. But, it does need urgent and positive action, not to "reassure" the public but to "protect" the public.

There is a big difference.

If they are seen to be protecting public health, the public will be reassured.

Either Defra, FSA or the poultry boys leaked the document using it to distract attention from pigs or possibly to try to get some small advantage by banning egg imports. Egg imports are not that huge anyway.

They can't ban egg imports under EU rules (damn the organisation!) so they must know what they are doing is issuing "knocking copy."

The one thing I was taught in my first years in business was "never knock the competition." We all had it drummed into us morning noon and night.

Compete, of course, advertise if you think it will help, but never knock.

Why?

It always backfires.

In industries where semi state socialist business principles still apply like British farming, what are effectively state controlled organisations, funded by levies on farmers, indulge in generic advertising, bypassing the industries customers and aimed directly at the general public.

"Go to work on an egg" kind of stuff. Sometimes there is some "British is best" too. The whole thing is, of course, a complete waste of money. Years out of date, in a super-marketed world.

Now half the population, at least, probably think eggs come of out chicken's bums and are certainly unaware most of the time that they are even eating eggs in a world of ready meals.

Any distinction between British and Spanish eggs is completely lost. They don't know and they don't care. Some farmers might want them to care and constantly condescendingly talk of "educating the public."

Another bit of nonsense. They don't care. It's a free country, they are entitled not to care.

The few discerning lads and lasses, like us fine folks, are probably the only ones that can even cook the things (excluding me, who is not allowed in the kitchen as being a health hazard.) Most of "our people" have a few hens anyway.

If there is a draft report that salmonella in eggs is a problem in the EU, the relative guilt and remedies can be sorted out in smoke filled rooms.

Even the lowest estimate gives Britain still at eight percent.

What the FSA needs to say is that although there have been big improvements in dealing with salmonella in eggs and levels are falling, the consumer should continue to cook eggs properly. Eggs used in manufactured foods and eggs cooked properly at home or in restaurants pose no risk.

There are obviously things you need to do in restaurants to make sure that the advice is always followed.

In the flagship Paxman interview, all the FSA did was to suggest the unrealisable and inappropriate solution they were going to ban Spanish imports.

That is a fat lot of good when half of Britain spends weeks on the Costa every year stuffing Spanish bacon and eggs – and anyway eight percent of British eggs need cooking anyway.

What is the industry going to do? Stamp the infected ones with a little Lion and a big black cross?

These people seem grossly incompetent. All they have caused will be a drop in consumption of ALL eggs and failed to give the public potentially life saving advice.

The real reason Spanish eggs got a kicking was because there was a rushed desperate attempt to kill the Toxoplasmosis story by producing a sexier one.

I'm pretty certain that the latter is the case. I mean the chance of getting Edwina Curry on TV.a former PM's mistress, sacked from the Cabinet, the last time this story ran.

That gets more attention than a Defra cover-up of disease in British pigs uncovered by the dreaded French.

The cover-up won't work. They will simply make things worse for both poultry and pig farmers. Can you see the French backing down, when Britain is publicly slagging off Continental egg producers?

Paxman, who remains a force in the land, will take up the Toxoplasmosis story with glee. He looked suspicious throughout the interview. Once the BBC find out they have been used, they will come back twice as hard.

Regards
Pat Gardiner
www.go-self-sufficient.com