THERE'S something fundamentally wrong with a market which, when temporarily starved of its principal product, promptly lowers prices when that product is made available again. It is doubly so when prices faced by consumers rise in the shops.

This was the situation many farmers and shoppers found themselves in this week as British meat began to find its way into the food chain once more.

Farmers reaching the abbatoir after a long and at times tortuous bureaucratic procedure found they were offered 10-15pc less than before the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. Perversely, shoppers were paying up to 30pc more for certain meat cuts than before the crisis.

Mr Nick Brown, the Agriculture Minister, said it was an abnormal market, pointing out abbatoirs faced unique costs associated with the outbreak and this perhaps explained the price drop.

That may be so in part but many farmers feel that the meat industry has taken advantage of the desperate straits farmers are in. Having jumped through hoops to get stock to someone prepared to take it, farmers were hardly in a position to turn round and go home if they did not like the price.

This weekend the National Farmers' Union is attempting to discover who in the food chain is profiteering at farmers' expense. The government, which surprisingly has singled out the supermarkets for criticism and conspicuously failed to offer farmers any relief in this week's Budget, should do all it can to assist