A RATHER irksome piece of nonsense from DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) is still with us, so nothing new there then. I am referring to the six-day standstill, a hangover from foot-and-mouth 2001.

If any cattle or sheep come on to your farm, then that closes you down and you are on a standstill for six days. It does not matter if the animals or animal is your own - if they have been off the farm and even if they are returned the same day after perhaps being shown at an agricultural show, or been to auction and returned home not sold, the standstill kicks in for six days during which you cannot move animals off the farm.

It seemed like just another obstacle put in the way of farmers although, as I understand, it did have the blessing of the Professor Anderson inquiry at the time - not that farmers gave his inquiry their blessing, not by a long chalk.

Why do I say it is little more than a nuisance? Simply because there is no foot-and-mouth disease in the country. If there was, there would be an immediate clampdown on the movement of animals anyway.

As it is, you already have to fill in licence forms in triplicate when you are moving animals off farm, one of which must be sent to the animal movements office, so it has that information on record. We should continue with this and that should be sufficient.

I'm not even going to mention beef coming into Europe from countries where foot-and-mouth is endemic.

At one time, lots of farmers could not even spell bureaucracy - now they are drowning under a welter of the stuff. Being a kindly soul I would put it this way - the Government did not do very well at handling foot-and-mouth and, apparently, its inept handling of the disease made it the laughing stock of Europe. I understand the Netherlands cleared up its outbreak in a few months.

Nor am I hiding behind this column, because at the time I told the ministry that they should be following the recommendations of the committee set up immediately after the 1967 outbreak and to make recommendations on how to deal with any future occurrence. It was chaired by the Duke of Northumberland and I think became known as the Northumberland Report.

Henry Plumb (later to become Lord Plumb) was a member of that committee and if Henry Plumb puts his name to a report, then it's good enough for me. I do not know if the ministry consulted the report but it certainly did not act on it.

If Secretary of State Margaret Beckett is wondering what to get farmers for Christmas, she should scrap the six-day rule - problem solved.

Dialect word: Nous meaning sense.

Thought for the day: Researchers have already cast much darkness on the subject and if they continue their investigations we shall soon know nothing at all about it.