Letter: Farmers fight back

Sir: There was a time when I would have been upset by your leading article, but times have changed, and I now have to agree with you.

Farming has for decades been claiming to be an "industry"; farms have, for the most part, become factories; animals are at best a "crop". The farmers, led by the NFU, have sided with profiteers, even when it has involved huge animal suffering, as in the protests over live exports.

Having sown the wind of industrialism, and alienated the public by insisting on the lawfulness of sending calves to crates and sheep on gruelling journeys to barbaric slaughter (not to mention feeding chicken to cows), the farmers cannot be surprised when they reap the whirlwind of public fury.

If farmers want to be treated differently from other greedy industrialists, they will have to stop behaving like them.

Dr AMANDA VANCE

West Chiltington, West Sussex