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Death of British Agriculture: Wanton Destruction of a Key Industry

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"The fate of agriculture is intimately bound up with the fate of democracy
itself....no civilisation has ever survived the loss of its agricultural
base" concludes Dr North at the end of a most worrying, informed and
penetrating survey of the legislation that has led to the situation British
rural communities now find themselves in.

Dr North knows intimately the ways of successive bureaucracies who have
managed, by a combination of well meaning bungling and carelessly imposed
regulatory burdens, to put British farming at a disadvantage. Although known
to be an energetic and witty Eurosceptic, Dr North does not lay very much of
the blame for the plight of British agriculture at the feet of the EU
Commission. It is, to our shame, Britain itself that has so mismanaged food
scares, EU regulation, the CAP and - especially - the recent animal
diseases.

The book is both depressing and exhilarating. Dr North is under no illusions
about the many sad mistakes to have hit the farming industry but he also has
sensible suggestions for avoiding complete catastrophe. He writes in an
accessible manner which avoids any kind of sensationalism. Far from jumping
on bandwagons, he looks closely and critically at the many conspiracy
theories of recent months and debunks them, seeing much more to worry about
in the narrow self-interests of scientists, big business and empire building
government departments. Criticisms of current farming practices are looked
at very coolly, as are the complaints about unfairness from the
supermarkets. Even MAFF/DEFRA, the department who so grotesquely mishandled
disease control, is dealt with fairly - although he pulls no punches when
looking at, for example, the dirty dealing that led to the loss of so many
British slaughterhouses.

If anyone still wonders why so many thousands of concerned people in Britain
have been calling out for a proper public inquiry into the government's
handling of the foot and mouth crisis they need only read this book. They
will then see the foot and mouth crisis to have been just the latest in a
long line of tragic errors - a final straw that cannot be ignored.