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Death of British Agriculture
 
Decline of a Key Industry

by
Dr. Richard A. E. North

(Sunday Times writer & UK agriculture policy expert)

- to be published September 30 2001 -

Paperback 300 pages   List price: US$22   UK£14.99 currency conversions

Contents     Synopsis

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Contents

• Introduction
• The impending Death of Agriculture
• Foot-and-mouth the last straw
• Collapse in incomes
• Effects of the destruction
• Fingering the culprits
• Sir Richard Body
• Danger - Maffia killing fields
• Deja vu
• The poultry slaughter campaign
• Ministry officials
• Systematic cheating
• Infected feed theories
• Mark Purdey and BSE
• Foot and mouth - the fatal flaw
• The vaccination debacle
• The Standing Veterinary Committee
• Export clearance criteria
• Roots of madness
• Cognitive dissonance
• Lessons learned?
• Enter the Reformers
• The Common Agricultural Policy - CAP
• Castle of lies
• Mad officials
• Critics
• Subsidies & public money
• CAP not the culprit?
• Reform - the party manifesto
• Germany & the greens
• Empty posturing
• Berlin - Agenda 2000
• Enlargement & Poland
• The reality of reform
• Mansholt & MacSharry
• A clean sheet of paper
• Bubble of self-deception
• Murder on the Fontainebleau Express
• Follow the money
• UK agricultural policy
• Maximising the rebate
• Subsidies & competition
• The European scene - EAGGF payments
• Non-discretionary & discretionary payments
• Subsidy disparities
• Ireland competition
• Agrimony & rural development funds
• The roots of parsimony
• Rebate calculations
• The Fontainebleau accord
• National support
• The single market
• Red tape & the Mad Officials
• Red tape - bureaucracy
• IACS, crop assurance schemes and other burdens
• Officials galore
• Mad officials - Environment Agency & others
• Slaughter most foul
• Ignorant blundering
• Double standards
• Low grade harassment
• Regulation and farming
• Survey of Grievances
• Bludgeoned to death
• Farming is no longer fun
• The Deregulators
• Michael Heseltine as 'Tarzan'
• Deregulation & re-regulation
• False perceptions
• Self-maintenance
• Controlling the Leviathan
• Circumventing financial controls
• Next Step Agencies & SEFRAS
• Frustrating the process
• Deregulation - precursor to more regulation
• The Nature of regulatory models
• The intervention model
• Failure not penalised
• Mad Scientists & Killer Eggs
• Hidden killers - government scientists
• Salmonella in eggs & Edwina Currie
• An engineered scare
• Genesis - the EPHLS
• The Thatcher cuts
• The PHLS response - inventing an epidemic
• Ottringham - the golden opportunity
• The real problem
• Cross-contamination & mayonnaise
• Why it had to be eggs
• Hysteria Rampant
• Divisions of responsibility - MAFF & the Department of Health
• Passing the parcel
• Hospital hygiene & cook-chill
• Listeria - Currie's dilemma
• Enter Professor Richard Lacey
• Increase in Listeria - food link denied
• Growing concern
• Eggs as a diversion
• Listeria hysteria
• Acheson's intervention
• Commons Social Services Committee
• Belgian pate
• The sick food of Europe
• Regulatory onslaught
• The Politics of Incompetence
• The enigma of BSE
• The BSE enquiry
• The effect of food safety scares
• Thatcher and eggs
• Damping down BSE
• The early days
• Acheson's 'plague from Egypt'
• The Southwood Committee
• From 'unlikely' to 'most unlikely'
• The Scrapie alibi
• People don't eat cats
• The mother of all scares
• The Department of Stealth
• Licensing and 'regulatory capture'
• Regulating medicines
• Medicines versus beef
• BSE - plausible means of transmission
• The prisoners rattle their chains
• Complacency & leisurely disdain
• Avoid raising public alarm
• A 'sinister fudge'?
• Tyrell and beyond
• Regulation and encouragement
• The Food Standards Agency
• The European disease
• Early EU involvement
• The 1996 BSE crisis
• Dorrell's statement
• The EU ban
• The 30-month cattle destruction scheme
• Hogg in Luxembourg
• EU indifference
• Chaos & confusion
• The selective cull
• The 'beef war'
• The Florence deal
• The hidden crisis
• Ministers climb down
• The new administration
• Lifting the ban
• Smuggling & the regulatory blitz
• The Integrationalists
• The Commission's Food Safety white paper
• Controls on animal feedstuffs
• Cynical response to public concerns
• The Belgium dioxin crisis
• Birds start to die
• Suspicions of dioxin
• The 'Note Destickere'
• Ministry inaction
• The crisis develops
• A fatal mistake
• Political exploitation
• The European Union acts
• Absence of risk
• The 'beneficial crisis'
• European integration
• The Harmonisers
• Entry to the Common Market
• Non-tariff barriers
• Choice of harmonisation
• Damaging effects
• Slaughterhouse sector
• Directive 64/433
• Obsolete standards
• Single market requirements
• New Directive 91/497
• effect on United Kingdom
• Large abattoirs benefit
• 'Food sense - 1992 and You'
• Slaughterhouse closures
• Jim Law and the officials
• plus ca change...
• The Global Power Broker - WTO
• The rigged market
• World Trade Organisation & tariff agreements
• The global political game
• The sugar industry
• Enter Pascal Lamy
• The need for a 'grand gesture'
• Everything but arms
• Quota cuts
• Destruction of an industry
• The banana war
• Beamglow
• Trade wars
• The Common Commercial Policy
• Red Herrings don't Fly
• Farmers contributing to their own demise
• The role of intensive farming
• 'Cheap' food
• The 'greedy' farmer myth
• BSE & Meat and Bone Meal (MBM)
• Battery Hens
• Salmonella infection
• The experience of Sweden
• The role of the supermarkets
• Popular scapegoat
• Government more to blame
• Consumer response to price
• Support & abuses
• 'Greedy' farmers paying out of their own pockets
• Quo Vadis?
• Farmers sinned against
• the National Farmers Union (NFU)
• 'Useful fools'
• Addressing the central issues
• Membership of the EU
• Halfway House
• Multiple problems
• The insoluble dilemma
• Benefits of membership
• The 'elephant in the room'
• The EU dimension
• 'Group bondage'
• Abolition of MAFF
• Red tape & regulation
• Scares
• Whither salvation
• The conditions for change
• Vision
• 'Joined-up' government
• Flaws of a common policy
• Agricultural policies
• The need for rural policies
• CAP objectives
• National rural & countryside policy
• Lack of understanding
• Decentralisation
• The broader policy infrastructure
• Interplay between different policies
• Rural policing
• Public transport
• The role of local authorities
• Subsidise or Die
• Financial support
• Removing subsidies
• The New Zealand experience
• A North American view
• The other side of the coin
• The subsidy chain
• The case for state support
• Support essential
• Crisis measures
• Sourceof finance
• Agricultural support
• Payment for intangibles
• Differential payments
• Political justification
• Implementation - the 'one stop' shop
• Management of the scheme
• Land tribunals
• The scheme in practice
• Self-help
• Global trading
• Better Regulation
• Complexity of the subject
• A different approach needed
• 'The third way'
• Veterinary Medicines
• A guarantee of safety?
• Nothing can go wrong
• Post-licensing surveillance
• The Veterinary Medicines Directorate - VMD/VCP
• Judges and Juries in their own cause
• Regulatory capture
• Excluding the competition
• An alternative model
• The insurance model
• Genetically Modified Organisms - GMOs
• Freeedom for all
• Planning and other problems
• Dealing with 'Scares'
• The nature of the scare
• The nyktomorph
• Scare elements - universality, novelty, plausibility, uncertainty
• Scares as an artefact
• Structure of a scare - phases
• Limiting the damage
• The appliance ofscience
• Neutralising the scare elements
• Scares in progress
• The Food Standards Agency
• The European Food Safety Authority
• In Paradisum
• No 'happy ending' in sight
• Fantasy agriculture versus vision
• 'World Order' conspiracies
• The rationalisation agenda
• No-one in charge
• Dilution of authority and responsibility
• Circumventing the democratic process
• 'No Minister'
• No salvation in the European Union
• CAP - the least of the problems
• Globalisation
• Fate of agriculture
• Farming needs democracy
• Measurement of decline

• Notes
• Index

Synopsis