Dirty.

Nasty, smelly, dirty farms are to be punished. Only clean, wholesome, glittering farms where the staff wear starched and pressed wellies and the toilet-trained pigs all have little boots and shower every day are to be favoured by Labour.

Alternatively, Labour are going to use the flimsiest excuse they can get to avoid paying compensation for the last foot and mouth outbreak. That's right. They haven't paid up yet.

It's now been long enough since the last outbreak for the government to pretend that it was all due to dirty farms and nothing at all to do with any government lab staffed by the chimps Longleat declared too dim for pubic display. Blame the victims. It's the modern way.

I've spent quite a bit of time on farms and if you have a thousand head of pigs on your farm or worse - several thousand chickens - well, life is going to be generally dirty and smelly pretty much all the time. There is a lot of shit to shovel. Every day. It just keeps coming.

I've also been to piggeries that require everyone to shower on the way in and change into farm clothes, then shower again on the way out. That is 'biosecurity' and it's supposed to protect the pigs from horrible diseases carried by people who aren't sick. The rats and sparrows were always exempt because as biosecurity experts know, these are fastidiously clean creatures whose farts smell of lavender and fresh-ground coffee and who always travel at least five miles from the farm before taking a dump.

You've guessed, haven't you? Yes, it's a total waste of time. Other measures are sensible - trucks transporting animals are limited in how far up the track they can travel, people who've been to another pig farm can't visit this one for three days, and so on. The showering units are expensive to set up and achieve nothing.

If you don't have the Government approved form of biosecurity then the farm will have 'Dirty!' written on it in red paint and will be blamed for the release of dangerous pathogens from any government labs within two hundred miles.

Someone from the government will decide whether there's any dirt on the farm. Presumably by comparing it to a local hospital ward. Some farms would still pass.

Most farmers won't be getting any compensation for the government's bioblunder because now, it's the farm's fault.

Labour: Cut intelligence, not spending.