"Brown has pledged retailers will not screw farmers with price cuts on meat. Perhaps retailers should do the same"

Sabotage, extortion, allotments. What an eventful week it's been. As The Grocer was going to press, Philip McHugh was due in court yesterday (Friday) charged with two counts of blackmail and bomb hoaxing against Tesco following the closure of 14 Tesco stores last month.

Meanwhile baker Paul '£6bn doughnut' Evans has been accused of "fraud by false representation" after allegedly attempting, single-handedly, to do what every independent c-store owner and quite a few manufacturers would like to do and frame Tesco and Asda in a price-fixing scandal.

Both failed, of course. Unfortunately, the alleged sabotage that has led to this week's foot and mouth outbreak has been considerably more damaging. As increasingly bizarre insinuations continued, ranging from amateur gardeners and their allotments to deliberate attempts by US firm Merial to initiate a highly profitable nationwide vaccination programme, the good news emerging was that the outbreak appeared to have been contained inside the exclusion zone, limiting financial damage if not upheaval.

Lessons have clearly been learned and indeed Gordon Brown is staking his Premiership on his handling of the crisis. The Brown bounce surely continues.

The most interesting question, still to be determined, is whether "the supermarkets" will take advantage of the glut of UK meat now banned from export to "screw farmers". The PM personally pledged farmers that he would prevent them from doing so, showing how little he knows about the food chain, but with supermarket CEOs keen to foster good relations with farmers, it was strange that none made any reassuring noises to explain their position.