THE season of mists and mellow fruitfulness is upon us, but the erratic weather pattern has ensured there is still a lot of corn to cut and straw to gather.

Ever mindful of our welfare, MAFF has chosen this time, when every farmer is flat out working on the land, to call for a complete census on all older cattle born before the introduction of the new-style passports. It is a mammoth task which, like marriage, should not be undertaken lightly.

I tried running through my own form, in pencil, just to see what problems there might be and, for a start, around 25-30pc of the cattle were duplicated; some for no good reason at all, but others where handwritten suckler cow applications of earlier years had been misread by one party or the other.

For example, the number '1' had been variously interpreted as the letters 'J' and 'I' to produce three animals on the form. It took me well over an hour to get any sort of agreement on my 25-cow herd, and we have yet to get the animals in to be checked.

I am sure that the manual completion of our forms is going to lead to a lot more queries compared to the electronic transmission which will eradicate the calligraphic anomalies in our agricultural handwriting. Once the manual forms have been dispatched, then I believe they will be scanned into a computer with a bar code reader.

If the letter or figure 'O' is not a complete circle, the machine will throw it out and it will come back as a query; and there are a multitude of other options for mistakes which can, I think, only be returned.

On the other hand, dispatching the form electronically will at least overcome such petty frustrations.

As Malton Livestock Auctioneers, we want to try and help if we can, but it is difficult to gaze into the crystal ball. The Cattle Census website is up, but only in dummy form, and one cannot get any live information at the moment to enable us to test it.

All our cattle producers in Ryedale should be receiving a note in the post which I have set out in this column. We cannot do the work on the farm for you, and the physical checking will have to be done by the farmer, but where we can help is with our computerised facilities and the direct interface we have with the MAFF computers.

I believe we can cut down the queries on the forms by using electronic transmission and, at the same time, we have the opportunity of setting up a complete cattle register for Ryedale. Why not take the opportunity and ring Charlie Breese or Keith Warters about this free service.

YORK LIVESTOCK CENTRE

STOP PRESS

Cattle Census,Sunday September 10

The compulsory cattle count is a painful exercise at a busy time of the year, but we think it is a great opportunity to establish a full database of all cattle and we can help, so please read on.

Complete your Registration Form (CHR1) but do not send it off to MAFF (ring for details if you would like us to help filling in your form).

Bring your completed form to YORK LIVESTOCK CENTRE along with your USER ID, which is on the letter headed Important Information about the cattle herd registration website. We can then do the following:

Check your manual completed form is correctly filled in

Check the manual form against your cattle herd record on the MAFF web site

Provide you with a computer print-out of your cattle on the MAFF web site

Provide you with a photocopy of the completed registration form

Dispatch your details, either electronically or by post

Resolve any subsequent queries with MAFF regarding your completed form.

We can then begin to establish an independent database for all our clients' cattle that can be used for the electronic transmission of subsidy applications and movements in the future.

All of the above will be free of charge. For further details please contact one of the following:

Roger Pearce, Emma Atkinson, or Andrew Williams at YORK LIVESTOCK CENTRE, MURTON, YORK YO19 5GF

Tel (01904) 489731, fax (01904) 489782 e-mail rp@ylc.co.uk

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Last week, I told you about the diminishing spectre of the swine fever outbreak in East Anglia.

All seemed to be going well with restrictions being lifted but my Norfolk son-in-law rang yesterday to say there was another case.

The real heartache is for those producers caught up in the 20-mile restriction zone for whom there is still no compensation scheme in place.

Nick Brown has set up a scheme whereby, on welfare grounds, any producer who cannot get rid of his pigs can transfer them to the Government, which will have them slaughtered, but at the end of the day he gets nothing for them.

The scale of the problem is quite enormous and there may be as many as 150,000 pigs just waiting on farms unable to be moved. Through no fault of their own, producers of these pigs are at the moment having to stand all the losses which, even at modest values, will leave them picking up a bill for £10m.

It really is not fair.

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I am afraid I am totally cynical of, and indeed condemn, the way the popular media have handled BSE; and their latest disclosures over a quiet bank holiday news period does raise questions as to their true value.

It was right and proper that Professor Collinge should make public his latest findings on the research programme, namely that it is possible for the disease, or at least abnormal prions, to be harboured in the brain without developing further. We seem to have a lot of sensible men in our laboratories at the moment but their words are being twisted and blown up in a quite irresponsible manner by the media.

Dr Alan Dickinson, who is a leading neuropathogenicist from Edinburgh, has very sensibly pointed out that the findings are only confirmation of what they have known intrinsically for a long time. He stressed that it was totally misleading to say that the disease had jumped the species barrier and had at most been "pushed" under laboratory conditions. Cross species transmission of disease is not at all new and it is nonsense to suggest that this has been concealed from the public.

The media hype has been stimulated almost entirely for their own ends, whereas our thoughts should be directed towards the relative risks of what we are being told.

I hope the question of relative risk is not beyond the comprehension of the popular media as it applies to many things, such as smoking, alcohol, driving, obesity, taking drugs and crossing the road.

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It was one of the better harvest days on Tuesday, and numbers were affected, with 184 cattle in the market. Trade was excellent, and Continental bulls were averaging around 98p/kilo up to a top of 114p from Patrick Beal. Ron Potter also had a good heavyweight at 107p/kilo.

Clean cattle were no less dear and Intervention-type steers were making around 100p, up to a top of 107p shared by Dennis Boyes and Brian Lunn. The retail butcher heifers averaged 100p through the market and George Marwood led the field at 130p.

It is hard to see these prices being equalled, and it would be nice if there was a bit more support forthcoming.

Lamb trade is at last improving a little and there were 650 sheep in the market with an average of 83p/kilo. The best lambs, from A P Wood of Loftus, made just short of 90p/kilo.

Pig numbers dropped to 155, but trade was steady at around 80p and it was Fred Horsley who topped the market at 88p/kilo for a pen of cutters.