SOME 4,500 beef cows are expected to be culled this month in preparation for allowing older animals back into the food chain.

The slaughter will be the first taste of cohort culling of animals testing positive for BSE as part of the change to bring cattle over 30 months old back on to our plates.

"While this may come as a shock to some, enforced culling of cohorts must be accepted positively by all concerned as a small price to pay for the re-admittance of beef from older animals into the food market and the opening-up of bone-in exports," said Duncan Sinclair, the Meat and Livestock Commission Economics Manager.

England has to adopt the standard European practice of identifying and culling and establishing the relations of all animals slaughtered for food that test positive for BSE. Their definition includes all animals reared with the BSE case in the first year of its life, when they were aged less than a year old. It also includes herd-mates born within a year of the birth of a BSE case.

Mr Sinclair said the rapidly-declining incidence of BSE meant relatively few animals born after July 1996 were likely to test positive. However, around 4,500 cohorts of animals that have already tested positive for BSE are expected to be culled in preparation for the rule change.

l SIR Ben Gill, the ex-president of the National Farmers' Union and chairman of the Government's biomass task force, will be talking about the future for farming at Penrith next Tuesday (February 8). Sir Ben is the keynote speaker at an event organised by farming regeneration outfit Rural Futures to bring together farm advisers and the funding bodies that support agriculture in Cumbria. Doors open at 6.15pm at the conference centre in the University of Central Lancashire Newton Rigg campus.