FOR a large percentage of this week, Paul Morse, Keith Waters and I have been downloading information and the latest press releases from the DEFRA website in order to try and keep ourselves abreast with the constantly changing rules and regulations which they are proposing to put in place for this busy back end period.

I believe the column's regular author detailed last week the majority of the new restrictions on movements in general and I thought it might be useful for you to see some of the dates that are relevant to our various counties.

For those of you fortunate enough to be in an FMD Free county, cattle, pigs, sheep and goats could all start moving on September 17.

For the rest of us in At Risk or High Risk counties, cattle and pigs can start moving on September 24, with sheep and goats starting on the October 1.

If you are still awaiting your letter from Lord Whitty, a lot of these sort of details amongst other things are outlined in there.

The great stumbling block, as I see it, for farmers in the North Yorkshire area is that we are classified as a High Risk county and are only able to move stock within that same county.

If there is a glimmer of light, it is that we have exceeded 30 days in this county now without a confirmed case of foot and mouth which should mean that they will review our zone status and hopefully classify us as an At Risk county. This will make the restrictions on movements somewhat less prohibitive.

Then we come to the real spanner in the works; the blood testing.

All sheep that are wanting to be moved within a High Risk county require a blood testing prior to movement.

DEFRA has decided in its eternal wisdom that it has sufficient vets to cope with all these inspections and has decided not to allow local vets to carry them out which is going to lead to inevitable delays.

What DEFRA is proposing is that when one sends their written application for a licence to move stock in a High Risk county (which must include relevant ear tag numbers) the local authority will then contact the DEFRA animal health officer if blood testing is required. The animal health officer will then contact the farmer to arrange the testing where a percentage of the whole flock will be tested and not just the sheep which are to be moved.

The blood test if clear lasts for 14 days; all movements of sheep are restricted to a maximum of three separate destinations within that period.

The initial thoughts from DEFRA are that in response to an application for blood testing, a vet will be able to carry out this test, it is hoped, within one to two weeks, although they admit that in some cases it could take up to six weeks!

Once the blood testing has then been done, there will be a wait of seven to ten days for the results before the licence will then be processed which could take a further couple of days.

This is not what I would classify as "time and motion" at such a critical part of year.

All sheep to be moved must be marked with a farmer's tag which will have an individual flock number on for home-bred sheep, but any sheep that were not born on the holding must have a similar tag preceded by the letter S. The other stipulation is that they must not be red tags for one reason or another.

It is rapidly turning into a minefield and we are constantly updating ourselves as best we can and if you are struggling to make sense out of it, give us a ring on our helplines and we will do the best we can to explain it.

The entries have come rolling in and Keith Waters and I have been frantically charging around the county with the camera doing our best to dodge the rain. The proposed sale day of October 4 is looming ever closer and if any of you still haven't sent back your forms please do so as soon as possible as we will really need to try and have filming finished by the end of next week in order to leave us enough time to edit and produce catalogues.

We are getting a good few enquiries from both purchasers and vendors and we need to hope that our zone is changed from a High Risk to At Risk status in order to give us considerably more flexibility of movement.

I see that the Countryside Alliance is batting on with its plans for Host a Roast 2001 in which people across the country are invited to support what promises to be the nationwide celebration of British food and local produce on Saturday, October 27.

The Alliance is urging people taking part to buy food from their local farmers, butchers, greengrocers, cheese producers and farmers markets, etc and then hold a party, barbecue, spit roast or general knees-up for their local communities! If any of you have any ideas or are already planning to host one please let us know if we can help.

- Hopes for an increase in livestock welfare disposal scheme compensation rates were dashed this week as Government plans for review failed to materialise.

- Live sales resumed at Aberdeen and Northern Marts on Friday after their six-month sabbatical. Steers averaged around 118p per kilo with heifers around 98p per kilo. About 1000 lambs were sold with prices on a par from last year.

- The MLC is predicting a beef cattle shortfall of 8pc in both dairy and suckler beef herds by December and a 13pc fall in UK prime cattle slaughterings compared with 2000.

- If there continues to be a reasonable amount of stock coming forward for the Friday poultry sales we will continue these sales until further notice. Please note, however, that on Saturday, September 29 it is the Ryedale Farmers Market in the sheep shed together with the auction of poultry and garden sundries and there will therefore not be a poultry sale the day before.

- I believe that the first demonstration in London to protest at the pathetic attempts of the foot & mouth enquiry was very meagrely attended and there is talk of another one. If anybody has any more details could you let us know.

We have seen a bit of a change in trade this week, most notably in the lamb department.

There has been a sudden downturn in lambs, mainly because the promotion from the supermarkets for these smaller lambs has now stopped. Trade for the latter part of this week has sat at about 150-160p per kilo but there are shocking tales that prices are going as low as 140p.

Ewe trade is running fairly steady at about 75p per kilo.

The cattle sector seems relatively unchanged, with clean cattle still relatively easy to place. Good quality clean cattle are running at about 168-172p with bulls a little bit less.

Pig trade is almost too depressing to put down on paper, as all the local outlets appear to be getting very cheap stock from elsewhere. The better-end gilts can get up to about 100p per kilo but anything that is now overweight will be heavily deducted.

Help us to help you and ring our help lines at Malton on (01653) 697820/692151 and York on (01904) 489731.

Updated: 08:52 Thursday, September 20, 2001