A group of Young Farmers staged a protest outside a farming conference yesterday by posing alongside a cardboard cut-out of Margaret Beckett.
'Cardboard Marge' was dressed up in a campaign publicity T-shirt, picturing a combative-looking pig wielding a pitchfork, for the "ministerial" photo-call outside the Oxford Farming Conference.
The Young Farmers were giving their support to a legal challenge to the decision by Mrs Beckett, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, not to hold a public inquiry into the foot and mouth disease outbreak last year.
Organiser Robert Percey, 50, of Honiton, Devon, said that the judicial review had been launched by seven farmers and a vet and was due to be heard at the High Court in London next month.
Mrs Beckett is due to address delegates at the conference, which is taking place at Oxford University's Examination Schools, today.
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