POLITICKING aside, the European Commission has managed to yet again remind us of the barrage of bureaucracy and grandstanding that brought about the Brexit vote in the first place with its nonsensical prevarication over the use of the herbicide, glyphosate.

This has been deemed a perfectly safe product and it is used in millions of acres worldwide, but its detractors have infiltrated the corridors of power in Brussels to the extent that politicians seem scared to stand up against a vociferous and so-called 'green' lobby.

Let there be no mistake, the only green thing that will happen is that perfectly good crops of harvestable crops will be reduced in both quantity and quality by a blanket of verdant weeds. Even the most vehement vegan will be hard-pushed to get a decent meal out of couch grass, brome and blackgrass!

Compounding all of this is allegations that official EU reports which had deemed glyphosate safe, were, at best 'tempered down' and, at worst, altered to turn positive comments on the use of this important herbicide into negatives. Then we hear that one of the principle 'scientists' in France, involved in what should have been a totally science-based think tank with government and EU funding, was actually being used as a star witness by opposers of the chemical in actions within the US legal system.

That is the kind of tainted bureaucracy that fed resentment across all parts of the UK, ultimately leading to the Brexit vote. It's high time that Euro MPs actually stood up for what is right – as judged by independent and peer reviewed research – and not for what a biased and noisy minority tell them is right.

Health check

THE SYSTEM of health checks which keeps Scotland free of many livestock diseases, certainly proved itself this week by identifying imported animals that were shown to have bluetongue antibodies, prior to them being released from on-farm quarantine.

It showed that the checks and balances are in place to keep economically important 'new' diseases out of the national herds and flocks.

While it is easy to be xenophobic about this, it is also a vindication that the system does work. Maybe the only fine-tuning that is required is to use marker technology to identify animals that have been vaccinated against such diseases – then we could be doubly sure of what we are dealing with in imported stock.