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Foot and Mouth Disease and Bluetongue

My Lords, on the latter point, I am afraid that I do not know the sex of the midges, but I know that our midges—British midges—have now caused this, hence our announcement after a few days that we had bluetongue. That is why the first few cases did not amount to a bluetongue outbreak. We had to know that transmission was being caused by our midges biting our cattle and that they were giving it to other cattle or to sheep. I freely admit that there has been pressure all round on the industry in respect of the markets. That applies, of course, to those animals that go to market. Not all sheep and cattle go to market. Some people will not have anything to do with markets; they want to go straight from farm to slaughter. Pigs are not dealt with in that way. However, the fact is that the whole of the food chain has been disturbed at that level. As regards whether there has been profiteering, time will tell. People are looking into the issues raised by the noble Lord, which I did not address. I am in no position to do that. Clearly, there has been a drop in the price at the supplier level which has not been reflected in the price in the retail sector. That indicates that someone is taking a larger cut somewhere in the chain.