THE bold experiment to move the traditional Michaelmas Fair from the show field into the market and stage it over two days was an undoubted success, resulting in an almost total clearance of all the sheep forward.

In the breeding sheep section, the tone was immediately set when Peter Woodall made £96 on the third pen of Suffolk shearlings produced by Norman Caley. The rest of the Suffolk breeding sheep in the shed were keenly contested, with one-crop ewes making £75 to £88 and older sheep following close behind.

One might have thought that the Mules and Mashams would dip when David Lindley moved to the outside pens, but this was not the case and they were equally fiery.

It is a long time, probably beyond the memory of man, since the percentage sold of tups has been as high. The cattle ring was packed with farmers and there was a wonderful atmosphere for Philip Place to conduct the sale.

Many think, and perhaps quite rightly, that the market has not got the same buzz as a show field but most of the regulars supported the new venue and certainly Don Stewart created his own trade offering a bottle of whisky with every Suffolk tup sold.

The facts speak for themselves and I have set out below some of the most important prices:

Suffolk X gimmer shearlings to £100 from M Field (av £86.27)

Suffolk X ewes to £88 from T Spink & Son (av £59.48)

Mule gimmer shearlings to £88 from R & A L Potter (av £85.15)

Mule ewes to £70 from R Machin (av £50.22)

Texel X shearlings to £79 from Mrs A Henson (av £59.16)

North shearlings to £74 from R Machin (av £69.55)

Gimmer lambs to £56.50 from R Turnbull & Son (av £50.30)

Suffolk ram lambs to 430gns from J T Midgley

Suffolk shearling rams to 455gns from T M Bulmer

Texel rams to 400gns from J Lucas

Charollais rams to 360 gns from C W Marwood

After such a successful day, it was a shame that Elliot Morley's totally unreasonable demands for sheep licensing managed to ruin it and we apologise unreservedly for those purchasers who had to wait over two hours to get their licence. The reason is not hard to find and I pleaded with Mr Morley to make the regulations more practical when he first announced them but I still await a reply!

For our lay readers and non-sheep producers, perhaps I should explain. Since the foot and mouth period, we have been operating on a simple standard movement document that can be completed rapidly and handed in at the market. The system has gone quite smoothly and there is full traceability because all our records have to be kept for six years.

However, now that the last outbreak of foot and mouth is over 12 months behind us, Mr Morley almost vindictively has introduced a three-part triple-copy licence form which has to be completed for the departure, haulage and destination details.

If I say that one has to put in the date five times and the time of the journey three times you will appreciate its monotonous and repetitive stupidity.

As we had over 180 purchasers at the Michaelmas fair, you did not need a calculator to work out that at two minutes per licence the total time taken is six hours to complete the procedure.

Only the great gurus of DEFRA seem to know what will be accomplished with the new licences, but for farming it has created a huge amount of frustration and even more paperwork to store up.

The cunning twist in the Morley licensing scheme is that responsibility for completion has been shifted away from the enforcing authorities of DEFRA and the trading standards and put firmly upon the auctioneers and farmers; so that it appears we are to blame for the waiting time.

After weeks of pretty militant pressure, some of the supermarkets have agreed to pass back a price increase to the producer.

Certainly the NFU and Farmers For Action (FFA) have been instrumental in persuading the business giants to come to their milk, if you will excuse the miserable pun; and it looks as though other benefits may flow from it.

Initially it is a 2p per litre rise for milk processed into cheese. David Handley, the chairman of FFA, has further indicated that their wrath will fall upon any Co-op that signs a deal for less than a 4p per litre increase this autumn. He quite rightly reminds them that they are working for their members and are not there to be squeezed by the retailers.

The increase is a welcome start and, if not too late, may save the dairy industry which many pundits have been forecasting will collapse if something isn't done.

If only half the effort was put into stopping illegal meat coming into our country as has been put into our sheep licences, then DEFRA would have achieved a real breakthrough in disease control.

I have been on for months about the almost complete absence of any enforcement measures taken to stop meat coming in illegally and until something is done it is a waste of time piling more and more Gestapo-like regulations upon the farming fraternity in this country.

Last week, the NFU published the results of its survey on 10,000 travellers arriving in the UK: 99pc said they had not heard anything on the plane or ship about meat control; 99.7pc said their bags had not been checked for plants or food; and 100pc said they had never had a sniff from a sniffer dog.

The Government's sponsored Lessons to be Learned Report recommended that DEFRA should be responsible for the Government's efforts to keep illegal meat out.

It is over a year since the last FMD outbreak and we don't seem to be a step nearer from stopping the flow of unchecked potentially disease-carrying material into the UK

Everyone in agriculture is aware that there is no margin for error for the producer and the minute you have a subsidy application a day late, or a figure wrong, then penalties are applied without any mercy whatever.

Conversely, the official operating agencies such as DEFRA, BCMS or the RPA appear to have been granted an immunity from mistakes.

It is a pretty lopsided arrangement, but I thought you would be interested in two supposedly impossible situations that came to light at York last week.

A steer appeared in the market with two identical passports, both carrying the same detail. The second incident arose when we checked the barcodes on another passport and found that the barcode at the top of the document gave details of a different animal from the barcode at the bottom.

Very interesting, but no penalties and not even a yellow card!

Tuesday's market saw a better cattle trade for smaller numbers with 46 forward.

George Marwood starred in the clean section with a quite outstanding heifer making 141p per kilo. George also had a heavyweight heifer which made 120p per kilo and Pam Gibson had two steers both of which made 123p per kilo.

Chris Beal had the top-priced bull at 112p and overall the atmosphere was quite encouraging.

There was a good show of 850 sheep with the lambs averaging 94p through the market but this doesn't reflect the premium paid for the better lambs which are attracting remarkably different money.

Alistair Scruton topped the market at 107p per kilo for the lighter lambs with Derek Midgely making 105p per kilo for some heavyweights.

The message from the buyers is quite clear - that lambs do need feeding at this time of year if you are going to get a proper price for them.

Don't forget we have the first suckler sale on Friday October 18. There is a decent entry but anyone wanting to add to the numbers, please contact the office.

Updated: 10:10 Wednesday, October 09, 2002