OPINION: A mate of the Hound's reckons that 'socialist strategies' are alive and well within the ag industry.
According to your canine crusader's source, members of the Beef + Lamb 'Environmental Reference Group (ERG) - an offshoot of the BLNZ Farmer Council - have been asked to sign a 'code of conduct' (aka code of silence) in order to make sure that they don't outwardly criticise or question BLNZ's modus operandi.
"This is a group that is supposed to be the eyes and ears of levypayers and feedback to the rest of us great unwashed farmers and to BLNZ!", the informer claims.
"Hence any farmers who have a backbone and were originally handpicked for this group are refusing to sign and walking away from the BLNZ Kremlin."
This will indeed be a worrying development, if it happens to be the case.