Activist: "British beef is full of growth hormone. That's why it's so big."
Farmer: "Banned."
Activist: "Since when?"
Farmer: "Before you were born. My father had a box of the implants in the medicine cupboard and one morning in the eighties it became evidence. He buried it behind the muck heap. It's probably still there."
Activist: "You'd say it was banned."
Farmer: "The vet would say it. The abattoir would say it. The man from the ministry who turns up unannounced and takes a bit of kidney would say it, and he doesn't say much."
Activist: "They use it in America."
Farmer: "They do. A little plug behind the ear and the bullock puts on beef like a lad who's discovered the gym. And not one of them can come here, because the same law that stopped my father stops the boat."
Activist: "So there's hormone in the American beef."
Farmer: "There's hormone in all beef. There's hormone in you. There's more oestrogen in a glass of your soy milk than in a pound of Texan sirloin, and nobody's written a leaflet about the beans."
Activist: "That's natural."
Farmer: "So's a cow. The one behind you made every hormone in her from grass and nobody topped her up. She's been clean since 1988."
Activist: "You can't just say clean."
Farmer: "I can. I've got the paperwork. The cow came off hormones in 1988. The country went on them in 1961, and it's never once been asked to stand in a field and explain itself."