No sign of an NFU platform in this crisis

been representing the food sector? Who’s been standing up there with the Prime Minister talking about food policy and how we are going to navigate our way through the next few months? Not the NFU, but representatives from the supermarkets – the very (perhaps the only) people who stand to do well out of this emergency, given the way the likes of some have so smartly ditched their special offers in order – so they say – to stop people buying too much.

Proof, in other words (as if any further evidence were needed) of the way the supermarket sector has gradually assumed control of food policy in the UK and now virtually dictates it, while the influence and voice of the once-great, oncerespected NFU has diminished to the point where it is irrelevant to the vast majority of the population, many, many farmers included.

Hence when you talk to most consumers about food production their thinking now extends no further than the last check-out bill they scrutinised.

The nation has heard barely a word from the NFU in the last few weeks. Of course Minette Batters will tell you that the union has been working hard with the Government behind the scenes. My question is, therefore, if the NFU is on such intimate terms with the people leading the country, why have we not seen any NFU official sharing a platform?

There is plenty to tell people, after all. They could be told that lambs are fetching half what they did last week or being sent back to their farms unsold because buyers are holding back at markets or even not turning up. A sensible move if you are a buyer – leave the retail market short now and people won’t mind paying an inflated price at Easter when lamb does eventually appear.

About the only pronouncement from the Blessed Minette that has flashed up on my radar recently is the intemperate dig she had at the BBC for criticising the Red Tractor Scheme and hysterically claiming the BBC “might have blood in its hands”.

I can well understand her anger, after all, the Red Tractor Scheme is still very much the NFU’s baby. But her outrage is misplaced. The fact remains that appalling lapses of animal welfare have been uncovered at premises over which the Red Tractor flag flutters to denote that the livestock are properly cared for.

All this has done is to devalue an already discredited bunch of food production standards to which so many people merely pay lip service.

Producers who breach the required standards in similar schemes abroad – in Denmark and France, for instance – are thrown out on the spot and immediately lose the premium the quality standard products command.

Here?

A slap on the wrist, a warning not to do it again. Nothing, in short, that’s going to exactly rock anyone’s boat.

Particularly the NFU’s.