Tuesday, 21st April 2009
Familiarisation trips must be welcomed
Dear Sir,
I welcome wholeheartedly Farm Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel’s proposal for annual familiarisation trips for the European Commission’s agriculture directorate (P&J, Bureaucrats told to get out of ivory towers, 18th April 2009).
Heading onto farms to get a better understanding of local agricultural issues will undoubtedly engage the bureaucrats more with the industry they are supposed to represent.
If some of them had got their boots dirty instead of sitting behind their desks in Brussels, maybe we wouldn’t have suffered the lunatic idea of mandatory electronic tagging for sheep, not to mention time-limits for farmers to sit on tractors (Vibrations Directive) and the pesticides ban.
Yours faithfully
Struan Stevenson MEP
