The case of Canadian pigs being infected with swine flu by a worker who had been on holiday in Mexico put me in mind of the reluctance of some farmers to allow close contact between people and animals at open days: it's not what the visitors might catch from the livestock that concerns them – but what the cattle, sheep and pigs might contract from the visitors.

However, of more pressing concern here than swine fever is bluetongue – and the apparently relaxed attitude of many farmers to the chances of there being a serious outbreak.

Last year the UK undoubtedly got off lightly, thanks to the mass vaccination programme (though one hill farmer did confide to me that he wasn't going to bother, on the basis that his cattle were grazing uplands higher than the flight ceiling for midges).

But NFU regional livestock board chairman John Hore, who farms in Pilning, near Bristol, has recently seen the effects of the disease on unprotected farms – and the picture is terrifying.

He was one of eight farmers who travelled with meat industry officials to France, where they had 32,000 cases of bluetongue last year.

Vets and farming unions are trying desperately to put the lid on the disease – present in two different serotypes – for this year but there are still fears that backyard farmers and wild deer could prove the weak links in the defences.

The devastation suffered in France, says John, should be a dreadful warning to British farmers not to get complacent – and to ensure the maximum protection for their animals

At the same time, the shortage created in the French meat market has created the ideal conditions for exports to be stepped up from the South West. Farmers now want EBLEX to put more of their levy money into an export drive.

But the Achilles' heel remains in the shape of livestock imports from the continent and, says John, if Defra is determined to go ahead with imposing some of the costs for disease control on farmers then the deal must include far stronger controls at ports of entry.

Otherwise the vastly augmented export trade he already sees being created could be wiped out overnight.