C.A.P. policies puzzle even E.E.C. farmers

Press, 23 July 1986, Page 29

C.A.P. policies puzzle even E.E.C. farmers

By

ROBIN CHARTERIS

in London “Plain ruddy daft, I calls it,” muttered farmer Bloggs over his pint of bitter in the local. “Feedin’ bloomin’ butter to ruddy cows just so’s they can make more bloomin’ butter. “And as for calling goats sheep. They wouldn’t known one bloomin’ end of a goat from t’other.” “They” are the bureaucrats and Trade Ministers of the 12 European Economic Community countries who solemnly gather together to sort out Europe’s agricultural problems. More importantly to New Zealand, they set our butter import quotas which can make or break our troubled economy.

The E.E.C. bureaucrats and their masters were unable to agree on New Zealand’s quotas for the next two years, leaving the country still in economic limbo.

Then they introduced a new regulation designed to reduce the E.E.C.’s burgeoning butter mountain. That is why farmer Bloggs and his colleagues in Britain are despairing. It gives European farmers the right to buy surplus butter from the 1.3 million tonne mountain to feed it to their cows which produced it in the first place. Such a policy already exists with skim milk. Buy from the E.E.C. lake, feed it back to the cows and so on. The butter mountain figure was current in midMay, but is said to be climbing at the rate of well over 100,000 tonnes a month, which is why the bureaucrats of Burssels who administer Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy are panicking. The butter they are offering European farmers to feed to their cows will cost farmers $556 a tonne (in spite of the E.E.C. paying $5282 a tonne for it, and spending

another $1668 a tonne storing it). Fanner Bloggs and his mates will have to fork out another $2BO to $420 processing the butter before feeding it out. They can buy equally useful rape seed oil or soya oil for less than $BOO a tonne, which works out cheaper than butter and easier to handle. Even if the bureaucrats do sell some of their surplus butter they are merely robbing Paul to pay Pierre. C.A.P. has become a wickedly expensive joke in Europe as well as for other countires like New Zealand. It now accounts for four-fifths of the E.E.C. budget and ninetenths of the hassle. To show how ridiculous C.A.P. has become, the watchdog group, Consumers in the European Community, has published some facts about it.

Every year, the 12 E.E.C. Trade Ministers in solemn conclave determine how the quota for pineapple chunks will be divided. As well as butter, milk, wine and meat mountains, the E.E.C. has a sultana mountain. According to E.E.C. rules, a cauliflower is only a cauliflower if it has two green leaves of a certain size. For E.E.C. purposes, goats are classified as sheep. Hyacinth bulbs are classified as vegetables. Surplus wine is used to produce paint. To keep prices artificially high in 1983, the bureaucrats destroyed 403 kg of apples, 1648 kg of lemons, 1388 kg of oranges, and 41 cauliflowers for every minutes of every day of the year ... while millions around the world starved.