WILDFIRE raged through the Galloway Forest Park GROWING BARLEY for whisky is a mainstay of Scottish arable farming – but under lockdown, maltsters and distillers had to put the brakes on production, casting doubt on what harvest market will be waiting for the crops that many growers had just finished establishing. It costs a lot of time and money to completely shutdown and restart a distillery, so many of Scotland’s were still open with a skeleton staff to keep them ticking over, with some producing ethanol for hand sanitiser, but none were going ‘full bore’ at whisky production. Distillery bosses were understood to be keen to resume full production, but were awaiting an indication from the authorities that their business was sufficiently important to justify bringing a full staff back in.
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Brexit lays an egg
Your leader on British farming and food standards after Brexit underplayed the role of international agritrade policy (“Ploughing its own furrow”, November 28th). Take your example of free-range eggs. British consumers can buy them in confidence now because of high
EU and British standards. A tariff on eggs and egg products protects the market from imports that are marked as free range but are of a lower standard. In America, for example, an egg can be marketed as free-range as long as the hen house has one pophole; there is no definition as to what counts for a “range” or outside area for the hens, drastically reducing the cost. A British hen house will have, say, 20 popholes depending on the size of a flock. Without a tariff, lower-priced America
bird flu FREE-range poultry must now go into lockdown in a bid to protect against devastating bird flu. From December 14, all bird keepers, including those with small backyard flocks, will be legally required to keep their birds indoors and follow strict biosecurity measures to limit the spread of and eradicate the disease. The housing order will stay in place until the government deems the risk has passed. The measures build on the strengthened biosecurity regulations brought in as part of the Avian Influenza Protection Zone (AIPZ) on November 11, following several confirmed outbreaks in wild and captive birds across the UK.