THE Prince of Wales last night delivered a passionate criticism of 50 years of industrial farming, which has produced BSE, the destruction of the ancient countryside and "horrifying" abuses of animal welfare.
Calling for the reform of farm policy throughout Europe, he pointedly omitted to blame farmers for abuses such as "treating animals like machines".
Instead, he laid the blame for farming's failings at the door of the architects of Europe's present incentives to farmers and with the public for misunderstanding or ignoring the true costs of "cheap" food.
The speech, at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, in praise of 50 years of the organic farming body, the Soil Association, was the first after his divorce.
Therefore it was the more striking for its unapologetic moral tone, its stress on "timeless principles", the arrogance of man and the need to respect - a Christian - God.
The Prince itemised the full, disturbing effects of the industrialisation of farming. These included lost wildflowers, farmland birds, depleted topsoil and polluted watercourses, together with profound health and animal welfare issues.
"Dairy cows with a life expectancy of 20 years or more are now literally milking themselves to death by the time they are six or seven, worn out by producing more than their body weight in milk every month," he said.
As a result, cows suffered from distended udders and chronic mastitis despite the routine use of preventive applications of stronger and stronger drugs.
The steep rise in the consumption of intensively-produced pork and chicken, almost all of which was produced under conditions that caused infinitely more suffering than the beef or lamb it replaced, was one of the most ironic results of BSE.
The speech is bound to be seen as the fox-hunting Prince's strongest yet in favour of the welfare of farm animals - something that he clearly sees as in no way contradictory.
BSE was just one example of how society, and farmers , had been "paying twice" for cheap food. The disease would have cost taxpayers £1.4 billion in slaughter bills by the end of the year and farmers much suffering.
Farming would also cost the public £1 billion, the cost of removing pesticides from the water supply.
There were also the unquantifiable costs of landscape and wildlife damage, and the newly-quantified costs of agriculture which (though two per cent of the economy) produced 10 per cent of acid rain, and four per cent of greenhouse gas emissions.
There were also, he said, nutritional costs, reported by the New Scientist when it said that new plant varieties grown in Asia's "green revolution" were so nutritionally deficient in trace elements that a loss of 10 IQ points had been observed in a generation of children reared on crops grown in this way.
He said the fact that we simply did not know if the same results were replicated in the developed West was profoundly worrying.
The Prince also amplified his earlier fears about genetic engineering, calling for a new standing Royal Commission to consider the ethical issues raised by "Frankenstein-like" manipulation of animals and crops.
He suggested that science had reached "a moral and ethical watershed beyond which we venture into realms that belong to God, and to God alone".
A new body was required to bridge the gap between a tiny group of knowledgeable experts and the public.
He said there was no point in blaming farmers for the price signals that the Common Agricultural Policy gave which said we wanted cheap food and plenty of it. They had been "outstandingly successful" in achieving those goals.
The polls showed that the public prized the countryside second after free speech.
Yet, while "green" farming - in all forms not just organic - was top of the public's demand from the CAP, only one arable acre in 100 was eligible for environmentally sensitive area payments.
What was needed was the reform of EU farm payments to reward all farmers for providing environmental services to society as whole, and to stress the objectives of health and naturalness throughout the food chain.
The Prince pointed to growing consensus between farmers and environmentalists that the best way would be to pay farmers who committed their farms to environmentally sound methods.
He had tested some of these ideas at Sandringham and found that mainstream European farmers shared many of the views of their supposedly more enlightened British counterparts.
He insisted that farming "sustainably" did not necessarily mean farming organically, as he had done on his Highgrove estate.
But he said that Britain's organic farming scheme, which paid the least in Europe, had to be the reason why the organic sector in Britain might reach one per cent of the market by 2000 while Sweden, Denmark and Germany expected to have 10 per cent at least of their land in organic production.
The NFU gave a mixed response to the speech, saying he was highlighting the current debate but was pessimistic in his view.
"The Prince's view is a gloomy one which would not be recognisable to most farmers who take a great pride in their products and their economic welfare and environmental achievements," said a spokesman.
