Category: Food Politics

Trade deals in respect of farmed food products will define what standards should apply to produce traded between countries.  The UK Government is currently developing new trade agreements with foreign countries as part of the Brexit process.

The National Farmers Union (NFU) has launched a petition asking for your support for their campaign to ensure that standards agreed in these negotiations on imported food to the UK should be to leading world standards, recognising the UK’s high standards of safety and welfare.

Some might argue that standards in the UK could or should be at more sustainable levels than now in many differing ways, but relaxation of import standards would create a lower base from which improvements could move forward, quite apart from any economic or health implications.

The NFU state: “Farming throughout the UK has high standards of safety and welfare with an ambition to be net zero in greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.  There are very strict controls on farming methods allowed in the UK.”   They ask that such standards should apply to all food which is imported here so what we eat is safe, traceable and produced to high welfare and environmental standards. 

To find out more about the reasons for the petition and an opportunity to “sign” it, visit https://www.campaigns.nfuonline.com/page/56262/petition/1?locale=en-GB.

Feel free to pass this information to others who may be interested.

We will be happy to hear your thoughts on this issue at ask@ledburyfoodgroup.org – it could change radically farming in this country.

Every day there seems to be something in the Media about eating meat. We are being encouraged to eat less meat (IPCC Report 2019) to reduce carbon and methane emissions. But reducing Co2 is so much more complicated. Emissions from rearing animals, particularly cattle for meat and dairy consumption may account for some 14% of the total created by us. This is an international figure though, and may not be true for the UK.

If you saw the BBC documentary on Monday 25th November, “Meat, a Threat to our Planet”, you may have been put off eating meat ever again. It was horrific to see vast herds of cattle and huge numbers of intensive pig farms which feed the American appetite for meat, and the ecological consequences of this. It is shocking to see farmers burning Amazon rainforest so that they can rear beef cattle, and the precious Sierra in Brazil being turned over to grain to feed these animals. Industrial scale “factory” farming like this produces cheaper meat and it is this that we need to stop eating. So let’s not eat meat from America or Brazil, but let’s continue to support our local meat producers. Our carbon footprint and farming practice is nothing like that of the Americas. Small scale pasture-reared meat is high in nutritional value and low in carbon footprint.

Continue reading “To Meat or not to Meat?”