I hope the farm regulations in this country never become like those in Europe. To be required to keep a passport on every cow would be horrible. To be required to argue with some stupid bureaucrat about whether a particular cow was alive or dead would be unbearable. This from The Economist’s Correspondent Diary….

On top, for Mr Webb, come the grain-dryer for the contractors’ wheat and barley, (“no rapeseed this year, thank God—in a dry spring it bolts like lettuce”) and bringing in the big bales of straw. And the computer. And the ever-mounting documentation—including a 14-page passport for every beast in the herd—required by DEFRA, the former Ministry of Agriculture. Not to say its bureaucracy:

“Send us details of cow X.”

“It died years ago, we sent you its passport.”

“Still alive in our records.”

Mr Webb e-mailed them a picture of a cow being carried off by a UFO.