SOME weeks ago I was privileged to see Willie McLaren's power point presentation showing the history of the Aberdeen-Angus breed.

It greatly added to my enjoyment that Willie had seen and could tell me about most of the animals pictured over the past 60 or so years. Apart from a black hide and a lack of horns, it seemed that the beasts had few other common factors. They came in every shape and size.

The biggest were double the weight of the smallest. As all were show winners or sale toppers, that were deemed by judges at the time to be the best of the breed in that era.

Allowing for some changes in demand from the meat trade and also the inability of breeders pre-ultrasonic scanning to estimate accurately what a beast was like hanging on a rail, the variance in phenotype is astonishing.

The ideal beast, both in times past and today, is usually represented best by winners at major prime stock shows. Invariably, these are cross-bred and combine the virtues of two or more breeds.

Before the Second World War, these usually involved an Aberdeen-Angus and were very, very fat. Now a native breed seldom, if ever, wins a championship at major prime stock shows. The winners are invariably a combination of extreme Continentals and are very lean. They will certainly yield well.

Despite the claims of their butcher buyers, they can hardly be five star eating. The article in the December 19 issue of The Scottish Farmer about Price Tag, the champion at LiveScot illustrated this perfectly. Predictably, he killed out 'at an astonishing 71%'.

His carcase weighed 445kg, so would have been financially penalised under normal circumstances and the photo of him being cut through the ninth rib shows that he was devoid of marbling.

A fortnight ago we received notification that our cattle were due for their four-year TB test. This time, there was a sting in the tail. Up to now only cows that had calved or bulls over two were tested. Now, we must test everything over six weeks. No one can tell me why.

We have never had any history of TB in the herd. I have never heard of anyone in the neighbourhood having had a problem with TB. Does this change make for any better animal health? No!

Does it make for extra work and increase expense? Yes, Yes, Yes!

Three men will be occupied for four days on a chore that most dislike that normally takes two.

We have just scanned the ewes. As usual many require re-tagging.

We have our usual amount of fencing needing repaired. The posts used to last 25 years; now they last eight or often less.

We now pay someone to take away our dead sheep, when we used to bury them for nothing.

We just do so much and every year more is demanded without making our product either safer or more acceptable to our end customers. All at a time when we are trying to contain costs to stay in business.

It is noticeable that one of the watered down demands made by David Cameron of his EU counterparts is a reduction in red tape. He knows perfectly well that this will be readily agreed, as everyone knows that 'reduction of red tape', besides being a vote-winning sentiment, doesn't mean a damn.

We have seen one survey after another on reducing red tape in agriculture, the most recent by Brian Pack. To date, these have never been followed up and have made no impact on unnecessary legislation.

The time has come for NFUS to demand that, for each piece of new and controversial legislation we must suffer, an individual, not a committee, is made to explain to farmers just how it will improve the present situation. If that person cannot do this. they should be removed from their job.

Och well you can rant on. The last time I did it was about wrongly aged cattle in the bull sales.

As any thinking breeder knows, the problem could have been sorted out by now. However, the breed societies have been utterly lily livered and the whole sorry business rumbles on. Showing, selling and performance recording; it wrecks the lot!

My old friend, Dave Nicholls, has just had his portrait hung at The Saddle and Sirloin Club, in Louisville, Kentucky. For an American cattle breeder, this is the highest honour in the land.

When Dave, aged 13, started breeding cattle, the Angus and Hereford breeds were being crucified by dwarfism. Although, coincidentally, this came at a time when fashionable cattle were very small framed, dwarfism is quite unrelated and is a recessive condition where calves seem perfect at birth but stop growing early in life and are commercially useless.

Top herds became unsaleable overnight if dwarfism was suspected. The young Dave consulted Professor Jay Lush, who was to animal genetics what Einstein was to physics, on how to overcome the scourge.

In those days, before DNA analysis made identification of a rogue recessive gene possible, Doctor Lush told Dave to breed each of their stock bulls to their own daughters. If no calves were dwarfs the bulls were clear.

Dave's father had four bulls. Their pedigrees indicated that three would be clear of dwarfism and the fourth was sired by a known carrier. Dr Lush's test proved that all of the bulls were actually clear so Dave advertised 'Angus bulls for sale, guaranteed free of dwarfism'. Immediately, cars and pick-ups started arriving in numbers at the farm and the bulls sold right away.

Dave patted himself on the back, reflected on his business acumen and marvelled at his genius. Many years later, he realised that the real reason for his success was that everyone who knew his father, Merrill Nicholls, knew that, if he said it, that was how it was. Dave's message to any aspiring cattle breeder (or possibly anyone else) is that the first requirement is integrity.