President's Blog - 16 June 2010

Hectic day in London today with Chief Executive Withers.

First up was a reception on the banks of the Thames to celebrate the 10th anniversary of "Little Red Tractor" assurance. A very worthwhile event for a very worthwhile scheme. The logo is carried now on several billions of pounds worth of British produce with milk,fruit & vegetables, poultry and red meat. Obviously Scotland also has its own assurance schemes but much of our produce, particularly lamb which is slaughtered south of the border or in Wales, only carries Red Tractor.

Janet Street Porter, who is the ambassador for the scheme, was on hand to assist and the pictures are available on the brand new NFUS Facebook page!

Next meeting was with brand new Scottish Secretary of State, Michael Moore, in Dover House, Whitehall. We discussed UK ' reserved' issues including taxation, retail ombudsman, animal health budgets and the general budget pressures which are bearing down on all departments.

A quick march past the Houses of Parliament to Smith Square and the offices of DEFRA at Nobel House. Here we met with long term ally of NFUS Jim Paice who is now the Minister for Agriculture alongside  the Secretary of State Caroline Spelman.

Jim is extremely familiar with all the issues and we had a wide ranging discussion on everything from CAP reform to AH&W, fuel duty to ombudsman.
All the while, in Strasbourg, MEPs were preparing for a vote on the first reading of the Bill to introduce mandatory country of origin labelling. (Cool for short.) The vote is tomorrow ( wednesday) and is likely to be very tight.

Off to Stratford tomorrow for the NFU Mutual AGM, UK joint Union Office holders meeting and NFUM Charitable Trust.

I have a good friend and NFUS member Gordon Halley from Crieff who is a pilot with BMI. It is just possible that James and I combined will have completed more air miles than him this week!