I’ve never been to Amerton Farm Park and yesterday’s visit was very nearly my last! The trouble with ice is you can’t see it and as soon as I stepped out of the car I very nearly went my length!

Luckily I still had hold of the door handle so just about preserved my dignity all though there were a few barely concealed grins from spectators wondering why I’d suddenly disappeared from view.

It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been prepared either.  I had on my best walking boots which, in view of what I’d paid for them, ought to have taken me up Everest and back, but were actually more useful as a pair of skates.

The one thing I was thankful for was my huge, thickly padded, mole skin jacket.  It’s huge because it belongs to Nearest & Dearest and I’d purloined it in anticipation of several freezing hours hanging over fences and pens studying the various merits of Tamworths, Old Spots, Berkshires and the rest of the porcine variations common to the pig keeping fraternity.

How wrong can you be!  Our pig keeping course was confined to the conference room with liberal supplies of tea and the heating nearing tropical proportions!  The nearest we actually got to a pig were the slide show images!

In spite of this, the course was really quite good.  It was funded by DEFRA and focussed on all the many rules and regulations surrounding the keeping of pigs.  Once again this made me realise how much our farmers are stifled with red tape.  Although this is often frustrating, especially when, by their own admission, DEFRA’s on-line services which are supposed to make things easier and quicker do not always work properly.

For the public though, it is very reassuring to know that it has access to the safest and most welfare friendly produced meat in the world.  What a pity then most people still head for the cheap, foreign imports, blithely unaware that many of these producers do not stick to the same vigorous welfare codes and traceability standards as Britain does.

It’s all a far cry from when my Pa kept pigs during the sixties.  He kept three or four sows free range before it became a buzz word simply because that’s how most pigs were kept on farms.  The huge intensive factory units were still to get off the ground and the use of antibiotics not yet wide spread.

Keeping animals under very intensive conditions involves a constant struggle against disease which can have a knock on effect on the human population, hence the copious amount of red tape and traceability rules.  Our European confederates are not so fussy even though they are bound by the same regulations as us. 

Take battery hens for instance … Oh no, don’t take battery hens!  One hobby horse is enough for one day!