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The government has announced the appointment of a new farming industry stalwart to chair a taskforce to slash regulations affecting farmers and food producers.
DEFRA has asked the new Task Force on Farming Regulation to put the industry "under the microscope" to find ways to "reduce the regulatory burden" by cutting the rules themselves, as well as their implementation and enforcement by inspections.
Richard Macdonald, who last year retired as director general of the National Farmers Union after a 30-year career with the organisation, has been appointed as chairman of the group.
The NFU welcomed the announcement for its likelihood of "reducing the stranglehold of red tape", arguing that members struggled to cope with rules that made tougher demands than those from European rivals, and could involve inspections of the same issue by up to four agencies.
The news is likely to be well supported in most instances, although conservation groups, water companies and food experts have expressed concerns that in some cases biodiversity and landscape which are currently protected by regulations might be compromised with their relaxation. Vicky Hird, food campaigner for Friends of the Earth, said: "We're in favour of anything that helps farmers do their job, but with the crisis of food security, climate change, biodiversity loss, and food safety issues over the last 20 years, it's essential they keep regulations in place that maintain and enhance our ability to farm sustainably and safely."
The NFU has lobbied for:
• Ending a ban on hedgerow removal.
• Removal of some "cross compliance" conditions linked to subsidies (which totalled more than £3bn last year), such as leaving uncultivated strips for wildlife, around fields, maintaining footpaths and protecting "costly landscapes".
• A loosening of restrictions on the movement of livestock and of tracking, introduced after the BSE crisis.
Terry Jones, the NFU's director of communications, said farmers had three main complaints: "gold-plating" regulations from Europe, which put British farmers at a disadvantage; "double banking", or more than one rule for the same problem; and "regulatory creep", such as the extension of pollution controls from chemical factories to pig and poultry farmers due to the ammonia in animal waste. Other rules, said Jones, could be replaced by voluntary agreements, such as making skylark patches, instead of having set aside land for biodiversity.
But Barrie Clarke, communications director for Water UK, said 95% of actions demanded by the EU Water Framework Directive to clean up pollution of rivers, lakes, groundwater and coastal seas, one of the regulations farmers have protested against, would be delivered by water and sewage suppliers, while farming is "a significant, possibly the biggest source" of the pollution.
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