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CONSULTATION FOR POLICY COMMISSION ON FARMING
AND FOOD FOR ENGLAND
Policy for British farming and food is a topic for detailed
discussion offering golden opportunities for salutary and
bold reforms. Such “Green Planning” for farming,
food, health, and the land have engaged the research of organisations
such as ours; contributions to the BSE Inquiry and comments
to the Food Standards Agency for intensive debate and reform,
e.g. in seminars with well-versed representatives with broad
interests reflect these earnests.
1. Objections, General
The Future of Farming and Food
VEGA's submission to the government's Commission on the Future
of Farming and Food outlines our views on policy reforms needed
to improve human health, animal welfare, and the environment.
1.1 We regard the Policy Commission’s establishment
and purview as unapt and possibly harmful: urgent measures
are needed to cope with the particular consequences of the
BSE and FMD disasters and to staunch the torrent of subsidies,
compensations, and grants the Treasury has had to meet as
a result of entrenched evils in the live/deadstock trade,
but they must not in haste prejudice opportunities for belated
long-term planning and reform. We find it difficult also to
distinguish the separate but concurrent functions performed
by Lord Haskins.
1.2 We are suspicious of the Commission and its utterances
for these main reasons.
1.2.1 Restriction to England is perverse: much of the food
consumed in England has been produced on farms and in slaughterhouses
and processing plants in the rest of the British Isles, let
alone from transhipments from most of Europe, and imports
from countries outside the European Union. A “little
England” outlook must not blink a responsibility for
the welfare of animals traded and slaughtered in this vast
area of food production nor the social and economic consequences
in satisfying the home demand for a year-round continuity
of supply for foods out-of-season in the U.K. If Englanders
are to rise to healthy exhortations to consume at least five
portions a day of a diversity of fruit and vegetables what
variety can they expect of England’s supposedly green
and pleasant land during the winter months – let alone
fresh oranges, bananas, and apples for all or most of the
year?
1.2.2 The programme of the Commission is both limited and
rushed; spatchcocked and inept policies uttered after only
a few months’ deliberation can spoil long-term planning
based on earnest debate, information, and education. The Commission’s
present purpose ranks as an insult to commentators on national
issues with means of powerful persuasions for widespread benefit,
not only for the U.K. but asserting for Great Britain a sturdy
example and authority in international trade and affairs.
1.2.3 We criticise strongly the complement of the Commissions.
Our accusations salute the officers’ badges and rank
rather than their personal probity, but we take particular
issue with the representation and interests persisting of
the ill-reputed Meat and Livestock Commission. It has been
discredited over recent years in its partiality and connivance
in the evils of a substantial part of the live/deadstock industry
and its importunate demands for subventions from the Exchequer
for relief from the proper retribution of its incompetence.
We are not alone in our reservations and we warn the Commission
of the disrepute likely to accompany receipt of its pronouncements.
Sinners may come to repentance and some latter-day participants
in financial affairs may be rapidly recanting and learning
from their mistakes, but we would still keep clear of investing
our pensions in funds administered by them.
1.2.4 Farming and food should be allied to health and this
issue: tempering the pull of the consumers’ demands with
the push for production and profit by the food-industry has
not been adequately recognised in the Commissioners’
composition and purport. We must be thankful at least that
British farmers have no desire to grow tobacco, but we lament
the vision of the political establishment when it can seriously
entertain a candidate for a post of possible influence, even
the Prime Ministership, who has served as a Minister of Health,
flagrantly ignores the toll of woe caused by the tobacco-industry,
and actually participates in its workings. Such ridiculous
politicking undermines public confidence in the activities
of commissions that must be seen as fiercely independent and
committed to the common good.
2. Objections, Specific – Undue Reliance on the Live/Deadstock
Industry
2.1. To emphasise our indictment we cite some specific criticisms
and recommendations.
2.1.1 The BSE Inquiry’s report directed “stern
criticism” (to quote the Meat Trades Journal, 2nd November
2000) to the MLC and, in particular, to its former director-general,
Colin Maclean. The indictment concerns “statements made
by the Commission in 1990, a position statement it made on
BSE in 1995, an advertising campaign it mounted in late 1995,
and its relationship with one of its scientific consultants,
who also happened to be a member of the Government’s
advisory body on BSE, SEAC”. The Inquiry concluded that
“on a number of occasions the MLC, under the guidance
of Mr Maclean, made inaccurate statements to the public that
exaggerated the safety of beef and suggested that precautions
that has been put in place were unnecessary. We are satisfied
that there was no basis upon which Mr Maclean could reasonably
believe that these statements were accurate”.
2.1.2 The Report also criticises the MLC and Mr Maclean over
statements to the press and in a video circulated to local
authorities in January 1990. This concerned possible contamination
of meat supplies with bovine offals. A press-release in the
MLC’s name following the significant news that a cat
had contracted an SE was also criticised for inaccurately
suggesting that BSE posed no risk. In the Report’s words
“Mr Maclean’s enthusiasm to rebut what he described
as ‘alarmist stories and overblown claims’ led him
to overblow his defence of beef”. Commenting on such
instances the Report concluded “the inaccuracies would
have tended to foster a belief that beef was safe but that
BSE was no threat. To that extent they would have made their
contribution to the perception in March 1996 that the public
had not been told the truth”.
2.1.3 Criticising the appearance of the MLC in the experts’
estimations as a body whose primary function was to promote
the beef-industry, the Report cites evidence of its condemnation:
“More significantly Mr Packer (MAFF permanent secretary
at the time) said that in January 1996 he sought to distance
the Government from public statements by the MLC ‘because
I feared the MLC would wish to make statements in their advocacy
to which the Government could not subscribe.’” The
Report continues that some of the “over-extravagant”
comments made “in respect of the safety of eating beef
“appeared by 1995” to have robbed statements by
the MLC in relation to the safety of eating beef of much of
their credibility.”
2.1.4 The BSE Inquiry also took issue with a comment from
the MLC the “all specified offals are removed and destroyed
before meat enters the human food chain” when the MLC’s
own head of veterinary services had told the Inquiry that
removals of materials of specified risk “were not always
carried out to the letter of the law”. The Report states
that Mr Maclean knew of this information (and contradiction).
After noting evidence from other witnesses the BSE Inquiry
found that the MLC’s position statement in July 1995”
had a degree of hyperbole”. Mr Maclean, as director-general
of the MLC, should not have allowed publication of an “unqualified
assurance” that all types of offal from all cattle were
removed and destroyed before meat entered the human food chain,
which was “one of a number of occasions when the MLC
fell short of the objectivity that should have been shown
by a statutory body with a duty to have regard to the interests
of the consumer.”
2.1.5 The BSE Inquiry condemned an advertising campaign at
the end of 1995 that claimed that the British meat-industry
was avoiding “even the remotest perceived risk (of material
carrying BSE infection) entering the food-chain.” The
Report described this “a further example of exaggeration.”
The campaign came at the same time as the then MLC chairman,
Don Curry, wrote to the then agriculture minister, Douglas
Hogg, expressing concern at breaches of integrity of the specified
bovine offals system. The BSE Inquiry holds Mr Maclean responsible
for an “inappropriate exaggeration,” Mr Curry, as
executive chairman, accepts “some responsibility,”
although he could not “recollect whether he was aware
of the terms of the advertisement”. Mr Curry was excused
blame for fault, because he could “properly reply upon
Mr Maclean to ensure that the terms of the advertising campaign
were appropriate”; however, “the repeated hyperbole”
of the MLC campaign must have led the public to be sceptical
of the advertising. “The result was that the MLC found
it had lost credibility” and the Report commends the
MAFF for its prompt action to protect the perceived independence
of SEAC and for distancing itself from the MLC.
2.1.6 Last year the MLC engaged in another bout of dubious
advertising and campaigning playing on the ignorance of the
British consumer on the composition of feeds for pigs and
aspects of farm animal welfare, accompanied by allusions to
practices and aspersions on farms and in slaughterhouses,
e.g. in Denmark, producing meat for the British market. This
campaign sank expensively under the Advertising Authority’s
opprobrium and under the weight of ridicule from consumer
organisations and animal welfarists. It overlooked strenuous
efforts, even by representatives of the Assured British Meat
Scheme, to reintroduce MBM into feedstuffs in livestock farming
in the U.K. and it had to concede that swill-feeding was permitted
for pigs to be slaughtered under the British Quality Scheme.
Classical swine fever has run through British pig farming,
further condemnation of which as been stimulated latterly
by implications in the epidemic of foot-and-mouth. The MLC
should have sought a rigorous ban on malpractices such as
swill-feeding and saved the Commission on Farming and Food
a belated action that must be surely expected of it, together
with ousting other wheelings and dealings to which MLC has
turned a blind eye.
2.1.7 The MLC’s pork promotion campaign upset some farmers
and interests in the trade itself. “For years many traders
have tried to ensure consumers are not reminded meat comes
from livestock” commented The Grocer (29 July 2000),
noting the embarrassment among shoppers in stimulating “serious
worries about seeing the skin and hairs – anything that
signals this is an animal. Consumers tend to be committed
to both animal welfare and the enjoyment of meat-eating, recognise
these are conflicting objectives and need the industry’s
help in addressing them”. John Howard, “the old-fashioned
Englishman”, marketing director of the Danish Bacon and
Meat Council, “likes to strive for consensus, fair play,
cricket” (and, undoubtedly, that mystical level playing
field), but he rounded on the MLC’s incompetence “It
is not prudent for the meat industry to overtly confront consumers
with the nitty-gritty of how their meat reaches the table,”
states Mr Howard, representing remonstrances to the MLC’s
bungling and postulating a false confidence among “mainstream
consumers” in retailers and meat suppliers and belying
the plow-to-plate openness and traceability the Good Standards
Agency and its counterparts in Europe purport to assert.
2.1.8 This farm-to-fork trust will take more then the meat
trade’s defective self-policing to generate. Paul Chadwick,
representing the small slaughterhouses, advocates of pithing,
and objectors to HACCP, bewails the reduction of the reputation
of the butcher to a point where s/he is “no longer viewed
as a respectable member of the community in which he trades
but has almost become a peddler of death”. Mr Chadwick
rails against the activities of the “animal doctors”
of the Meat Hygiene Service and he attacks the Food Standards
Agency, “which would like to public to believe that the
practices in butchers; shops are so deplorable and such a
risk to public health” (Meat Trades Journal, 6 July 2000).
(The FSA, through the MHS, is responsible for animal welfare,
as well as hygiene in slaughterhouses). An MLC study essayed
a solution to such misgivings with a need for “rebranding”
animal welfare into “more socially acceptable terminology”
to “help consumers accommodate their scruples without
feeling compelled to reduce purchases”. Rebranding slaughterhouses
as abattoirs has not allayed misgivings over the assault and
battery that goes on in them. Rebranding is an infelicitous
choice of word in this context. No amount of rebranding would
enable a British butcher to trade by flogging a dead horse.
2.1.9 After all these blunders the “cash-strapped”
MLC – “which has lost £1.7M in revenue since
the outbreak (of FMD) started in February and is bracing itself
for a shortfall of up to £10M over the year – is
sinking £900,000 into a four-week campaign promoting
pork” (Meat Trades Journal, 10 May 2001). Details of
the campaign were unveiled a few days after the MLC’s
new chairman, Peter Barr, told the all-party Commons agriculture
committee and the press that “our research tells us we
need a short-term £25M marketing drive to recover the
market to provide a platform for growth. Underlining the need
for “clawing back consumer confidence in red meat”
the MLC’s marketing director, Richard Lowe, remarked
on surveys suggesting that “15% of people are less likely
to buy and eat British meat as a result of the disease”.
3. The Report of the Phillips BSE Inquiry, Nutritious and
Valuable Feed for Thought
3.1 Citizens with a broader view of feed production and consumption
must warn the Government of powerful vested interests, some
disproportionately favoured in various ways, who are intent
on upholding a flagging industry trying to foist on customers
foods of dubious origins and attraction; further, the full
cost is not paid at the till for this speciously cheap feed:
the taxpayer faces the rest of the bill when the Exchequer’s
funds have to be raided to bail out in subsidies, grants,
and compensations a live/deadstock industry with such an appalling
record of depredations on the national food supply and health
and the environment, and on manifold violations of animal
welfare. BSE is reckoned to have run up a bill so far of £4Bn
and FMD of £3Bn. The Phillips BSE Inquiry has cost £27M
and the Government has not yet fully responded to its findings
and recommendations. In the evidence and statements (such
as ours) it considered the Inquiry anticipated factors and
reforms that must engage the attention and endorsement of
the Farming and Food Commission. Subsequent investigations
commissioned by SEAC and the FSA have added weight to the
Inquiry’s testimony.
3.2 The BSE Inquiry’s expensive procedures and explorations
of partiality and habit in the witnesses it called set a precedent
for the Farming and Food Commission. Each witness was asked
to declare his or her dietary practices and changes, if any,
made since the beginnings in the 1980s of the major BSE epidemic.
This useful test of conviction in the testimony adduced must
be expected likewise by commissioners and civil servants called
by the Government for duties on its Farming and Food investigation
and report. We subjected Professor Krebs to similar interrogation
when he was appointed head of the Government-appointed Food
Standards Agency. He was happy to declare his acumen in fforgoing
beef during a period when MAFF, the MLC, and farming interests
were pronouncing its safety; he also volunteered his support
for the efforts of his wife, a school-governor, to remove
beef from menus in school catering. We expect similar declarations
of commitment from Commissioners on Farming and Food. Indifference
to the indicators of hazard and the worse sin of castigating
those practising personal precautionary disciplines or institutional
responsibilities, together with the harm this negligence or
even wrongdoing has wrought on human and farm-animal populations,
should disqualify any such miscreants as advisers on a Farming
and Food Commission that the Government can trust.
3.3 Further, we emphasise the warnings the BSE Inquiry was
giving the Government on the probity of officers of the MLC
and representatives of the live/deadstock industry, and especially
their flawed assessments of risks and attempts at objectionable
interventions in dissemination of objective scientific, medical,
and veterinary evidence and of issues in doubt. Again, we
would expect commissioners on farming and food policies to
affirm support for the strictures in the BSE Inquiry Report
and to declare innocence of any of the wrongdoings we are
quoting from it. The Phillips Inquiry was limited to aspects
of the red meat industry (i.e. involving cattle, sheep, goats,
deer, ostriches, pigs, etc.). Poultry (chickens, turkeys,
ducks, etc.) provide white meat; pig producers sometimes vault
the colour bar and describe theirs as white meat. The Phillips
and later Inquiries emphasise that BSE originated and has
been mainly perpetuated in the predominant dairy sector of
the dairy/beef/veal industry, which is a part of modern intensified
British farming and normally supplies over half of the beef
sold in the U.K.
4. Food, Health, and Nutrition
4.1 Napoleon was surprised when his armies in North Africa
reached Egypt that they had come upon a land where men menstruated.
He was confused by a symptom of a prevalent parasitic disease
(bilharziasis or schistosomiasis) that caused damage in the
bladder and bleeding into the urine. He would see the like
if he visited today. An appraisal from a reconnaissance of
today’s Englishmen might prompt him that they were several
months’ pregnant. Wrong again: he would be witnessing
the plague of overweight and obesity with associated degenerative
disorders that, among others, connotes a nation manifesting
serious food-related disorders and throwing an appalling strain
on medical and surgical services. The NHS belies its name:
it has to function as an ill-health service trying to cope
with, among other ailments, the self-inflicted and cursed
inability to relate intake of products of the appetising enterprise
of the food industry with the declining need for such a surfeit
of calories in a population less and less physically active
and not increasing in numbers to take up the producers’
urge to raise output and sales.
4.2 Recent trends have prompted food-producers to play the
market with increased choice rather than sheer quantity; the
public has been able to appreciate variety and cultivation
of niche markets, but these developments have occurred under
a prevailing social and political expectation of cheap food
(at least as it is paid for at the till). Convenience rates
as another attribute of choice and counts in value for money.
The mighty food-industry benefits from promotions from producers
and retailers abetted by the media, publishers, the catering
and leisure industries and suppliers of fuel and equipment
for cooking (the English word for food-preparation is cooking,
an incongruous relic during the salad days, now many, when
good food uncooked can come from the kitchen).
4.3 For most of the British population, however, this excess
has proved harmful. The Government has the superficially unpopular
responsibility of diverting this enterprise into choices enriching
the quality of life from the quick profitability of mass-production
of quantity down to a price. The trend in which consumers
pay proportionately less of their outgoings on food must be
reversed and producers must be rewarded appropriately. Food
must rank higher in the domestic spend and initiatives by
Government through information, education (but not indoctrination),
and labelling must stimulate the customers’ confidence,
participation and control. This is a redoubtable task for
governments fearful of initiating long-term reforms with few
returns at the outset. The political position at the moment
is as favourable as it is ever likely to be for entering into
bold and salutary long-term policies for farming, food, health,
and the environment. The example of the resilience of the
tobacco-industry and smoking illustrates the size of challenges
that are necessary now in the supply of food.
4.4 The Government is now in a position to tackle food policies
with reinforcement and practice of recommendations consistently
from health authorities in Europe and North America. A meeting
convened in 1997 in Italy by the European Commission brought
together experts from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy,
Portugal, Spain, and the U.K. to define the merits of the
“estimable” Mediterranean diet. Elements of traditional
oriental-style diets overlap and add to these attributes.
They are relevant and applicable to the U.K. and not as exotic
as they seem at first, because the slow changes in genes have
not kept pace with the rapid – in evolutionary terms
– diaspora of our forebears to higher northerly latitudes.
Rapid reversals of this migration are reflected in returns
for holidays southwards to the sun and delectable food, rather
than in other directions with less clement climates and fewer
dietary delights. British farmers, even before anticipations
of global warming, have fallen in with the efforts of botanists
an breeders to grow “southern” crops such as wheat
(rather than rye), rape, linseed, Italian rye-grass, maize,
and even sunflowers and soya.
4.5 The experts defined the estimable fare as the “traditional
(European) Mediterranean diet”, which “is characterised
by an abundance of plant foods such as bread, pasta, vegetables,
salad, legumes, fruit, nuts; olive oil as the principle sources
of fat; low to moderate amounts of fish, poultry, dairy products,
and eggs; only little amounts of red meat; low to moderate
amounts of wine, normally consumed with meals. The diet is
low in saturated fatty acids, rich in carbohydrate and fibre,
and has a high content of monounsaturated fatty acids. These
are primarily derived from olive oil.” (We note that
rapeseed oils have most of the attributes of olive oil).
4.6 The experts “agreed that there is strong evidence
that a Mediterranean-style diet, in which olive oil is the
principal source of fat, contributes to the prevention of
cardiovascular factors, such as dyslipidemia, hypertension,
diabetes, and obesity, and therefore in the primary and secondary
prevention of coronary heart disease. In addition, there is
evidence suggesting that the Mediterranean diet plays a preventive
role against some cancers.” Achieving this salutary diet
requires reform and reversal of modern European trends, particularly
in consumption of animal-derived foods. It is an attractive,
if challenging, role for leadership, example, and intervention
by Government and attracts beneficial adjustments for British
agriculture. Unlike the heavily prohibitive tenor of the campaign
against smoking, a dietary campaign could be handled in a
positive and enlightening way and stand up to farmers, food
processors, and retailers reluctant to jump the groove of
productivity dominated by yield and output for a more innovative
appreciation of choice and value.
4.7 With this aim the Government could resort to a more enterprising
manipulation of its tax-levying powers. Most European countries
and the USA exercise such discretion; the British Government
could start with an increase of VAT by 5% (say) on animal-derived
foods, with the comfort of precedents in other countries.
5. Wider Responsibilities of Little England, Supply and Demand
5.1. The population of the U.K. accounts for less than one-hundredth
of the world’s people, but commands a far greater influence
in international trade. Like half the populations of northern
Europe and north America the British try sporadic bouts of
dieting, mostly to reverse the results of gluttony and sloth
and in the interests of health and fitness and extending liveability
without recourse to miserable terminal years with heavy costs
in terms of medication, loss of independence, and cries for
care. On the other hand, more people in the world suffer malnutrition,
face hunger, and succumb to starvation; they are unable to
compete on world markets in food but are regrettably motivated
by aspirations to meretriciously high standards of living
flaunted by the rich (and particularly by their commercial
interests) when prudent attention to the qualify of life and
independence would do more good. The opportunity now arises
for Britain, in reforming its farming policies, to assert
an example with for-reaching consequences. Objective analysis
of the mistakes and solutions must drive the future, not submergence
into a mire of lazy excuses.
5.2. Projections of world consumption of food are daunting.
At the moment they magnify errors and pressures that have
spoilt food-production, health, and the environment in the
U.K. The world’s production of meat has increased five-fold
in the last half-century and is now at about 220M tons. The
human population of about 6Bn is exceeded by enormous numbers
of farm animals wastefully converting feed into food and appropriating
resources of land, soil, and water: they number 1Bn pigs,
1,3Bn cattle, 1.8Bn sheep and goats, and 13.5Bn chickens.
Over the last decade per capita consumption of beef, pork,
and chicken has doubled in the world’s poorer nations.
This change goes with increasing affluence; however, meat-consumption
in developing countries is still only at one-third of the
level in industrial nations. The USA and China, accounting
for about 25% of the world’s population, consume 35%
of the world’s beef, over half the poultry, and 65% of
the world’s pork. About 36% of the world’s grain
goes to feed livestock and poultry. The global fish harvest
has soared from 21M tons 50 years ago to 120M tons now, with
an environmental detriment augmented by applications in animal
feeds.
5.3 In July last year, Don Curry, then chairman of the MLC,
addressed an invited audience at the Royal Show of guests
from the industry, with confidence that a likely increase
of meat-consumption of 35% over the next 10 years in global
terms and of affluent consumers from 2.1Bn to 2.7Bn would
offer promise to British producers. He also expected a rise
from 3.8M to 4.4M tons in the U.K.; and he forecast a major
opportunity for British suppliers in the continuing growth
in the catering and processed meat sectors, which are expected
to account by 2010 for two-thirds of the total meat market.
His optimism undaunted and the other half of the world’s
people overlooked in his assessment, Mr Curry conceded that
the meat-trade had gone through its “fair share of problems”,
but it was important to “look forward and be optimistic”
and to regard many of the threats of BSE to be overcome (Meat
Trades Journal, 6 July 2000). Mr Curry descried that most
of the increase in the demand for meat will come from the
Far East and South America.
5.4 Wrong yet again: the MLC’s economists reanalysed
the prospects this year, as the effects of the FMD epidemic
entered renewed analyses from the MLC. “Irreversible
change” is now forecast that would mean, for example,
“the U.K. sheep industry might have to prepare itself
for long-term contraction”. Operators should aim more
“at what the market requires” and anticipate higher
costs and poorer prospects for exporters. These doubts omitted
the FSA’s suspicions that BSE organisms might now be
lurking in sheep apparently harbouring them with or without
frank manifestations of classical scrapie. An immediate slump
in U.K. output is predicted, which would be attended, for
various reasons, in a drop in imports and only a partial recovery.
The British public do not go out of their way to buy sheep-meat
even when the price at the till is lowered as a result of
hefty subsidies to farmers; nor does sheepmeat commend much
attention from the processing and manufacturing industries.
5.5 The MLC’s latest analysis predicts substantial falls
in the home-production of beef and veal, which will be accompanied
by increases in imports. These changes spell difficulties
in the whole of the dairy/beef/veal complex. The MLC is also
expecting sharp falls in pig-meat production in the U.K. and
entertained “worrying implications” for the U.K.
as countries such as Canada increased production and exports.
Nevertheless, Bob Bansback, the MLC’s corporate strategy
director, perceived some reasons for confidence mainly based
on economic factors and the red meat industry’s “extreme
resilience” in “the face of BSE, Ecoli, and FMD
scares”. The red meat industry in the U.K. emerges as
a failing part of the national economy, suffered at great
expense in rushed rescue subventions from the Treasury, in
dangers to health and the environment, and in vain competition
for markets declining and/or in unloading excessive production
into the export trade. We recommend the Government to seize
the opportunity to begin a long-term reduction in the production
and consumption of red meat, by (say) 10% as an immediate
aim.
6. Farming, Pharming, and Husbandry
6.1 The red meat industry has urgent problems to solve, involving
the upkeep of sheep marooned while growing and needing feed
in areas isolated by FMD restrictions. Sheep-farmers must
be restrained from breeding next year’s crop of lambs,
with the usual heavy losses through neglect and exposure in
the less favoured areas but now overloading the market with
lambs, hoggets, and spent ewes and tups that fetch hardly
any price, nor can they be exported. The aftermaths of BSE
and FMD have yielded further embarrassments in dairy/beef/veal
sector, transhipments of bobby-calves for veal production
on mainland Europe having been halted and resumption of this
trade – like long-distance movements of lambs and sheep
– being likely to arouse outcry at the cruelty involved.
Likewise, the anticipated wheeling and dealing in the British
livestock industry will have to be banished, entailing closure
of markets and establishing tighter traceability, on grounds
of hygiene and welfare.
6.2 The poultry industry in the U.K. benefits much less than
the red meat sector from Government subsidies and other benefits.
Until recently it was able to keep the British market self-sufficient
in supplies of carcase-meat and fresh eggs, as well as rejects
and offals for manufacturing purposes and pet-foods. However,
it has latterly had to compete with imports from countries
such as Brazil and Thailand and ex-Comintern nations in Europe
to meet demands for manufacturing and catering purposes. Consumption
of shell eggs has declined over the last two decades, but
the slide has been arrested by belated efforts at reducing
risks of food-borne bacterial disease (e.g. salmonella and
campylobacter) and in attempts, some specious, at allaying
public disquiet over infringements of animal welfare and over
environmental nuisance. In the U.K. disposal of poultry waste
has become a serious problem. End-of-lay (“spent”)
hens have become of so little value that they are barely worth
the cost of transport and slaughter. In some aspects production
of pigmeat resembles the condition of the poultry-industry.
Both are regarded by the public as typical manifestations
of modern intensified and offensive farming, and many farmers
are ashamed of them and demur at generic claims for contributions
of farming to the beauty and amenity of the countryside and
environment that blink the premises, factories and operations
in which the “animal machines” are exploited.
6.3 However, cheapness and convenience have lulled the public’s
qualms. Although sales of white meat have made inroads in
traditional markets, the food-industry has muted any red-versus-white
conflict that might erupt with revealing discredit to both
parties. New and continuing developments will unsettle the
British food-industry, as imports progress from raw materials
to value-added commodities made in developing countries building
the required factories: chicken nuggets, vichyssoise, and
fast-foods will come to Britain ready-prepared and packed,
and Lord Haskins of Northern Foods will have to keep pace
with developments as Lord Haskins of International Food Factors.
As with other intensive farming methods (such as the dairy/beef/veal
system) British arable farmers have a big interest as suppliers
of feeds for animals denied the ability to forage for themselves;
many British exports of cereals are used likewise.
6.4 A report released last October from Mintel indicates
that red meat is becoming increasingly bought as an ingredient
for further processing. Purchasers of red meat remain primarily
the over-35s – and especially the over-50s. Lack of knowledge
on food preparation is perceived as a factor; younger consumers
are choosing the easier option of further processed rather
than primary foods; moreover, younger consumers and women
are likelier to abstain from meat, although this aversion
may begin to change as “the trendiness of vegetarianism”
declines. The Mintel report refers to a reversal of the vegetarian
and demi-vegetarian trend of the 1990s, noting strenuous and
expensive efforts by the MLC and Government to halt the march
of the meat-excluders. Nonetheless, Mintel descries a “major
factor” in sales of meat in the trends set by meat-reducers,
motivated to eat fewer meat-based meals, mainly for health
reasons, with fruit and vegetables widely regarded as healthier
options. Red meat has therefore to complete, in Mintel’s
view, with poultry, bacon, and delicatessen meats as a meal
centre, but also with veggie options that use quorn, tofu,
cheese, or pulses.
6.5 In another analysis Professor Phil Thomas spelt out examples
of the profitability for food-producers at the manufacturing
and retailing end rather than value-adding for the primary
source. Prof. Thomas, a research consultant for Ethos, states
(Farmers Weekly, 28 July 2000): “U.K. agriculture’s
turnover is about £7.2Bn a year; 51% of that is state
aid, so about £3.5Bn is earned. That compares poorly
with examples such as ready-made sandwich-sales, which had
a turnover of £6Bn last year”. He cited household
expenditure on food and drink at £82.5Bn, with food
accounting for 10.5% of total household expenditure. He emphasised
that “dairy farming must change for the future.”
Milk production must become more efficient and “meet
market and manufacturers’ needs, while dairy farming
must meet consumer needs and attempt to add value”. He
called for “increasing sophisticated technology.”
6.6 That technology is also being exploited effectively by
the “alternative” industry catering for the population
of dairy-reducers and dairy-excluders – “dairy-frees”
whose various aversions to “cow-juice” comprise
dietary allergies, intolerances, perceptions of unsuitability
and unnaturalness (of a food evolutionarily contraindicated
for adult mammals, which include grown-up human milksops unequally
sustaining the preservation of baby-guts), and unease over
the origins and prevalence of BSE. “The milk of human
blindness” is being toppled by developments, now in evidence
on supermarket shelves, in alternative dairy-products obtained
by feeding soya and other pulses and cereals (which may be
home grown and organic) into gleaming stainless steel converters
rather than into a limping population of miserable, mastitic,
and mucky cows.
7. Qualms, Quirks, and Substance
7.1. While increasing affluence is adduced to support changes
in food production and consumption, animal welfare and environmental
considerations count little in the prices in the shops that
the British public is prepared to pay. Complacency and inaction
lie behind many of the excuses and acceptance of the lack
of control implied in free trade; public confidence in government
agencies has ebbed and the education system, media, and advertising
industry have failed to arm the consumer/customer/citizen
with means to arrive at an objective personal assessment of
risk. More understanding of genetics, food production, and
nutrition must inform and heighten the interest in these matters.
The Government must strive to reassert an authority. We had
urged the FSA before announcement of the Farming and Food
Commission’s agenda to organise working parties and symposia
to tackle answers to many questions and to recognise the public’s
gut-feelings when science returns a don’t know or not-proven
feeling. The U.K. officially mounts no objection to “hormonised”
beef, in common with the USA and some other countries but
in disagreement with views from other EU countries, whose
objections are difficult to uphold scientifically. But…
absence of evidence does not connote evidence of absence.
The British public does not take to antibiotics in farming
or GM-feeds and foods; these “unscientific” objections
have strengthened to powerful and effective persuasions in
food retailing. The eruption of BSE elicited from scientists
and the public disgust at the conversion of archetypal herbivores
into “carnibals”, although such practices had been
connived at for decades by scientists, the MLC, the Government
and consumer watchdogs. The public would have been more impressed
and arrested if the journalists who indulged themselves on
Mr Gummer’s infamous blunder were not compromised by
celebrating their own daughters’ birthdays with parties
at McDonald’s.
7.2 At the moment the FSA’s reputation is imperilled
by subsequent outbursts of ridicule such as those that befell
John Gummer. The FSA declares that sheep-meat is safe to eat
and fends suggestions that any restrictions or impoundments
should be applied while calling attention to experiments that
may take years to justify their complacency or error; worse,
as such dubious confidence undermined Mr Gummer’s reputation,
so the temporizing FSA may be heading for discredit as the
consumers’ champion and purveyor of sound advice and
objective caution.
7.3 The FSA’s efforts at assuring the public of the
safety of food will create and stimulate demands for tests
on animals of the type required for registrations of pharmaceuticals
(not for nothing is the monitor in the USA known as the Food
and Drugs Agency). Tests for cosmetic ingredients and constituents
of foods nutraceuticals, and beverages, as well as for residues
of pesticides etc, will increase as experimentation for similar
safety purposes, having attracted curbs under the pressure
of public disquiet, in toiletries and cosmetics declines or
is replaced. Manufacturers of foodstuffs must take heed of
this precedent. Drugs and vaccines have to be developed to
counter the effects of ill-use and bad husbandry in the livestock
industry. Statistics on BSE are based on ugly tests on laboratory
mice; and control of FMD has borne witness to crude experiments
in containing disease in farm animals. In some ways the public
perceives the use in farming and food-production of “chemicals”
as a crude and inadequately-monitored form of experimentation
on the whole human population.
8. Professional Example and Commitment - Do Do-Gooders Do
Good?
8.1 If Government scientists and experts squander their authority
and reputation in increasingly fallible communications with
politicians, the public can gain little conviction from the
stand made by the great and good in some professions and well-heeled
consumer-organisations and self-styled champions of the environment
and animal welfare – and even rights. The RSPB proffers
advice on the environment and farming practices but spoils
its case by ignoring the plight of millions of unfortunate
birds exploited in intensive farming systems and in rearing
enterprises for blood “sports” perpetrated by most
unwelcome visitors to the countryside but sources of income.
The public would be more impressed if all members of the RSPB
declared their commitment by spending Christmas without a
turkey in the oven and strove to rid the countryside of the
cruelty of activities such as commercialised “sports”,
of which shooting of reared pheasants is an infamous example.
8.2 The RSPCA’s Freedom Foods scheme is a marketable
assurance scheme – one of a bewildering array of such
approbations – that fosters the belief that present demands
for animal-derived foods can be met with small premiums in
the shops and improvements in welfare on the farm. The scheme
is betrayed by the lack of appeals to the RSPCA’s members
to deny themselves any animal-derived foods that do not carry
at least the RSPCA’s Freedom Foods mark, of which implies
some shortcomings in animal welfare. Unfortunately schemes
such as the RSPCA’s nourish illusions beyond its purview
– that the approved systems were “friendly”,
organic, and as demanding in animal welfare terms as, say,
the Soil Association’s.
8.3 The Soil Association takes a wider and commendably more
objective view. Its members show a greater conviction and
constraint to practise what they preach, and demand from the
affluent public is promising; farmers and retailers are being
persuaded that this is a niche market with a strong and steady
demand. However, supplies of organic milk are already exceeding
demand and causing tension between farmers and retailers.
In a similar trend, free-range eggs now yield hardly any bonus
for farmers. Objective commentators and practitioners agree
that consistent and wide-ranging adoption of organic practices
would require reductions in the supply and consumption of
animal-derived products greater than we have proposed for
immediate adjustments in the national economy of farming,
food, health, and the land.
8.4 The veterinary profession is also an agent losing the
public’s confidence in issues of animal welfare. Herriot-worship
is losing its attractions as vets struggle with clashes within
their calling through connivance in disagreeable farming and
slaughtering practices, and the abandonment of many vets of
their complicity with farmers and pharmaceutical agents for
the cosier ministrations in small animal practice. It is becoming
difficult to enlist British vets for duties in the assault
and battery by which slaughterhouses operate, and the profession
laments the opportunities it is losing to keep an eye down
on the farm when the owner pleads inability to pay them for
visits desirable in the pursuit of good husbandry. Vets face
difficult decisions and boring paperwork in the rough and
tumble of routines for the Meat Hygiene Service, which has
in turn to deal with money-saving efforts at “privatising”
some of its services and devolving its duties on the specified
employees of meat-plants.
8.5 Animal welfare organisations fret at the chronic compilations,
malpractices, and recommendations (tardily heeded, if at all)
for reform of the exploitation of livestock. Undue effort
and expense (much of it now met by Government and charities)
has to be devoted to repetitious confirmations, some elaborate
and slow, of woes that a good stockperson would recognise
immediately as signs of bad husbandry and the need for urgent
merciful change. Do we really need construction of obstacles
and races to clinch for scientists the deduction that rickety
broiler chickens unable to bear weight on their inflamed and
bacterially-infected legs are in distress and likely to be
unable to feed and drink adequately? Vets must demonstrate
the sincerity of their professional vow to do their utmost
for the welfare of the animals in their care by publicly and
officially rejecting any complicity in bad husbandry by boycotting
the purchase and consumption of the products of evil husbandry.
Such self-imposed discipline would raise their standing and
set an impressive example to lay-customers, the industry,
and retailers. Vets must measure their knowledge and influence
with the doctors’. What respect can the public accord
to doctors explaining the evils of smoking while puffing on
a cigarette? Vets must display similar mettle on matters of
animal welfare and thus support efforts by Government in the
implementation of effective reforms: at the same time they
will be manifesting that systems rated “unacceptable”
by objective animal welfare research are just that to discriminating
purchasers. At the same time they would demonstrate solidarity
with farmers and producers of food with acceptable standards
and competing against a free trade flood of questionable provenance.
The Government and its agencies must exert rigorous surveillance
on claims, and labelling, and insist on detailed information
at point-of-sale for customers showing a healthy interest
in standards of operating and manufacturing practice.
9. Informed Choice for Customer and Producer – L’attitude
9.1 The foregoing requirements apply also to sales of all
food products. Incentives should be given to retailers putting
their weight behind primary producers and proving the superiority
of and deserved premiums on products prepared and monitored
to high standards (e.g. use and detection of pesticides, GM
feeds and ingredients, as well as residues and contaminants).
Education at all levels must be well informed to assess, say,
the pros and cons in GM feeds and foods to avoid sensationalism
and burdening the industry with quirky marketing reactions.
(We note different attitudes to GM in feeds and foods, although
the environmental arguments apply in both and the precautionary
principle is stretched to find risks to health – the
principle is certainly stronger in assessments of hazards
in crops and foods containing mycotoxins.)
9.2 Consumers and customers motivated by social, economic,
and political considerations would benefit in making informed
choices on agronomic issues, such as “fair trading”.
Use of sweetening agents illustrates this point nicely, e.g.
the factors involved in the production, subsidies, and tariffs
in the market for Europe-grown sugar beet, cane sugar from
developing countries, products of biotechnology based on crops
such as maize (corn) and on home-grown starchy substrates
such as potatoes, as well as synthetic sweeteners vaunting
lo-calorie claims. Interest must b e awakened and strengthened
in choices of potatoes and cereals, not just spuds, wheat,
barley, oats, but also for the functions (e.g. suitability
for storing, chipping, baking, brewing, pesticide resistance,
etc.), so that the customer appreciates better the farmers’
choice (e.g. the Russet Burbanks for McDonald’s or Santé
for blight-resistance in the organic fashion).
9.3 Definitions of local produce and food miles engage some
pundits on political agronomy. England is part of the European
Common Market, so tomatoes from the Canary Islands might now
be described as local and in economic terms should not be
described as an import. In terms of the WTO we are becoming
a global free trade area with no barriers. We avail ourselves
of corn from the USA, to make wholemeal bread; lamb all the
way from the antipodes smoothes out the seasonal fluctuations
in U.K. supplies, and most of the fruit sold in England comes
likewise from far-away sources. British farmers can grow Golden
Delicious apples but supplies are too late and inadequate
to compete with, say, the French (where, in addition, the
regard for wild birds is lower than in Britain and reduces
the depredations of these predatory frugivores that top-fruit
growers have to contend with in England’s local orchards).
Customers in the U.K. may wonder just how “organic”
tomatoes sold as such from Morocco may be; likewise with organic
wines and juices from all over the world. If we count such
crops as organic should we at least be sure that the labelling
and approbations – as well as the claims at the farmers’
markets a few miles away – conform to the same set of
rules?
9.4 In agronomic terms use of water supplies, irrigation,
and distribution must be comprehended in policies, especially
in view of global warming. British farmers resort to various
devises to overcome adverse climatic conditions, from greenhouses
and polytunnels to plastic sheeting, organic manures to darken
the soil, and fossil fuels and fermentation for heating –
and generation of greenhouse gases. Intensive systems of animal
production are also extravagant in use of fuel: prominent
advertisements for “free-range” meat and dairy products
from New Zealand allude teasingly to such factors. The fuel
cost of shipping in or air freighting green-leafies and tomatoes
from the sunny Canary Islands or Kenya during the bleak midwinter
in England may contribute no more to global warming than heating
greenhouses and pumping water for out-of-season cultivations
at 50º to 55ºN. The concept of food miles has to
work in two ways: organic tomatoes from the plantations in
Almería in southern Spain will call for replenishments
of compost and manure generated where they are consumed, so
food miles should be balanced by returns under the heading
of manure miles or compost kilometres. Chemical fertilisers
will probably be introduced ultimately at the areas of production
instead.
9.5 A locally-produced chicken tikka ready-to-eat from an
English processing factory is extravagant in rigorously-audited
food and manure-miles. Our national dish is far more exotic
than fish-and-chips. British farmers may claim to produce
“assured” British chicken, and British yoghurt,
may be labelled with tractor symbols (and there’s a gas
guzzler for a start; it is some years ago since British farmers
grew their fuels and motive power in the forms of grass meadows,
trees, and horses) but they are as British as a Rover car
assembled in England, for the components comprise imported
concentrates to force the intensively-reared birds and cows
into prodigious feats of growth and production.
10. Power
10.1 Complacency over cheap and inexhaustible supplies and
North Sea gas and fossil fuels must be assessed against the
environmental advantages in solar, wind, and tidal power,
especially for locally-produced supplies of electricity, entailing
minimum losses in transmission. Wind-farming seems to have
potential. Objections to the sight of modern windmills –
especially when electricity pylons stride almost unremarked
across our landscapes – may diminish. In coastal areas
barrages, large and small, might bring some prosperity from
power and irrigation in replacement for the declining fishing
industry. The Chinese are leading the way with several GM
crops that will grow and yield in salty coastal soil and withstand
irrigation with seawater. Farmers can grow industrial crops
(e.g. types of rapeseed that may be cultivated on set-aside
land and applied as fuels) and coppicing from forestry yields
combustible sources of energy and power, as well as materials,
e.g. for fencing. Special crops are being developed, e.g.
miscanthus, for farm-grown sources of fuel; methane generated
from composted wastes may also be applied as a resource of
this type. The Government must avail local farmers and horticulturists
to find outlets where their competitive qualities incur the
minimum costs in transportation. Sales through shops as well
as farmers’ markets are commendable additions to the
choice, flavours, and interest in farming and food, and they
might help to enliven trade in high streets as well as in
village shops. They would also revive possibilities in market
gardening and horticulture and even see a return to pick-your-own
enterprises and an increase in orchards. In CAP terms we recommend
the Government to seek latitude grants to compensate for a
disadvantage British farmers suffer in competition with growers
enjoying sunnier climes as many as 10º nearer the Equator
(although they may complain of disadvantage over water-supplies).
Standards and training – and wages – in the retail
and catering trades must be raised. The average British restaurant,
pub, or shop proffers more information on the provenance of
the imported wine that it serves than detail of locally-grown
crops or reared animals from which the “home-made”
bread, beer, pasties or pies are made. How many customers
know a Friesian from a Guernsey, although they can probably
tell Edam from Gruyere, a hock from a burgundy – and
a Fiat from a Ford?
10.2 The post-WW2 agricultural reforms to encourage self-sufficiency
reflected alarm over threats of blockade by war or other efforts
at throttling Britain’s usufruct of acres and investment
abroad. The food industry made appropriate adjustments, particularly
in industrialising its practices and reducing the skill and
labour in bringing staple foods to increasing urban populations
distanced from primary production, even in their own country.
Factory-made bread from homegrown grists became a feasible
cheap alternative to labour-intensive methods requiring batch
fermentations, unfavourable hours of working, and imports
of hard wheats from North America and continental areas at
lower latitudes. Such innovations within the U.K., emphasised
by combined systems of harvesting and their capabilities,
has favoured wheat and barley as cereal staples with great
versatility over, say, oats. In pre-WW2 Britain a multiple
retailer called Home and Colonial illustrated the assumption
that Britain had easy access to the world’s cornucopia;
subsequently, cheap travel enabled the hoi-polloi to demand
more exotic choices than boiled beef and carrots and fish-and-chips
on Fridays.
10.3 In some ways barriers to this unconstrained choice and
accessibility have recurred in different forms. Food safety,
phytosanitary, “organic” imperatives, and doubts
over the policing of production and exploitation of distant
resources, reinforced by vigorous labelling and advertising
initiates, have given home producers some respite from competition,
not always well-earned. Bio-terrorism and sabotage are factors
that can work both ways, as we explained in statements to
the BSE Inquiry; the persistence and spread of the BSE epidemic
and outbreaks of viral diseases such as FMD and CSF would
be interpreted to represent malevolence beyond careless wrongdoing.
CSF, BVDV, FMD, and myxomatosis are infections almost harmless
to people; other viruses such as West Nile, Borna, and Nipah,
could be transmitted similarly, causing loss of production
from animals and serious disease in people, adding their threats
to familiar bacterial zoonotic pestilences such as salmonella,
Ecoli, and campylobacter. Public health issues have been and
are in use as barriers to international trade, some speciously
to mask economic competition, but possibilities of cordons
sanitaires and reviews of the susceptibilities of various
methods of farming must return attention to the susceptibility
of animal husbandry to such contamination. Planners and policy-makers
must understand that the FSA is an expense, with much else,
incurred mainly through bad husbandry and flawed or absent
standards, with repercussions on the imports and exports of
farm products. The appalling crises over BSE and the toll
inflicted on the cattle and sheep industries and the Exchequer
tell of the full cost of cheap food. Reservations over residues
of pesticides in arable, vegetable, and fruit crops, and cosmetic
applications of “agrochemicals” are smaller burdens
that primary producers and retailers must be prepared to lift
at their own expense but with the reward of customers’
confidence. Recent disasters raise the demand for restocking,
which – as has happened before – may introduce and
multiply risk of disease and of untoward traits.
10.4 Increases in traceability and education, as well as
training and licensing of all animal and food handlers and
premises, must be pursued urgently. Operators in all parts
of the food trade must indemnify themselves against harm attributable
to their activities – in the way that the motorist must
not drive his car without adequate third-party insurance;
likewise, the insurers’ policing and penalties would
help to disqualify dodgy operators. For instance, livestock
farmers must produce evidence of rigorous and frequent inspections
by independent vets. Whereas meat inspection has been removed
from local to national control, in keeping with recommendations
in 1990 by the Richmond Committee, EHOs and TSOs have been
left under local authorities. We suggest that their powers
and efficacy in these conditions needs review and possible
overhaul. As with the MHS these jobs can be arduous, stressful,
and subject to intimidation.
People, Animals, Crops, Land, and Countryside
11.1 England is a densely populated part of the British Isles,
with several inhabitants per hectare of arable land, limited
possibilities for agricultural outputs in aptly-named less
favourable areas and none in sprawling urban and industrial
cover; and roads, airports, etc; tree cover is sparse and
nearly 90% of our timber requirements are imported, and space
and possibilities for orchards and for cultivations of important
crops such as hops are few and disadvantaged. Latitude, altitude,
and climate determine conditions conducive for grass and grazing,
mainly in the wetter western counties, in which sheep farming
and dairying (milk, beef, and veal) dominate. The cereal-growing
hectares in the eastern counties are the country’s breadbasket,
as well as being suppliers of concentrates for the many intensive
units (mainly pigs and poultry) that have been developed in
the area. Proximity to deep-sea European ports such as Rotterdam,
from which imported feedstuffs from all over the world are
broken down and distributed through ports on Britain’s
east coast, supports the provisioning of the intensive units.
Fishmeal too comes in from ports such as Grimsby. This division
is inconvenient for the dairy farmers of the west, who are
in effect operating intensive systems and need concentrates,
home-grown and imported, and straw for bedding. Transport
costs are proportionately high, especially for straw, which
is bulky. Straw is almost a waste product in areas such as
East Anglia, and breeders have produced short-strawed cereal
cultivars in the pursuit of 10-ton/ha (or higher) yields of
grains. Grass, rather than grasses, is the word for meadows
and pastures, for this is essentially monotonous perennial
ryegrass with none of the variety in transitional cultivations.
Two or three cuts of silage a year for winter forage rather
than hay-making overcome difficulties imposed b y the weather
and conditions for drying, but spoil the environment, reducing
its variety. Use of desiccant chemicals and Roundup to clean
up land immediately after harvest (now completed by September)
allows, with almost no break, for an autumn sowing of the
succeeding crop, which will be “showing its face to the
sun” well before the traditional spring broadcasting
on land left untilled through the winter.
11.2 Winter conditions in the U.K. are generally unsuitable
for typical dairy-cows, so they are housed in cubicles or
straw-yards for about six months of the year. Yields from
cows kept at grass, as in New Zealand, will run at about 4,500
litres a year for modern dairy-breeds, being simultaneously
pregnant and lactating for half the year; this is four or
five times the demand on a cow in a suckler-beef herd, in
which the calf would run with its dam for up to eight months.
Use of concentrates can double yields from dairy-cows; some
are giving over 10,000 litres (10 tons) a lactation. Organic
producers go for such high yields and also resort to such
questionably “natural” devices as getting cows in
calf by artificial insemination. The stress on the dairy-cow
leads to early breakdown and culling due to “production
diseased”, among which BSE may be counted: it hardly
occurs in beef suckler-herds. For these reasons we include
the dairy/beef/veal system among the profligate and cruel
intensive systems due by government action and application
of food technologies for replacement by alternatives. Purely
beef systems are less objectionable, especially as feedlots,
such as those in North America and Australia, are not used
in the U.K. British beef would cost more to the customer and
consumption would drop.
11.3 Dairying runs up relatively high costs in labour and
farm maintenance, but it is attractive in commercial farming
in sustaining a steady cash flow. The suckler-herd manager’s
investment is more precarious; for the intensive pig or poultry
farmer, finishing two or three “crops” a year, the
cash flow is fairly steady and nearly three-quarters of his
running cost go on feed. Mass medications and vaccinations
in feed and water supplies counter arrests and breakdowns
in production due to disease. These systems inflict heavy
penalties on animal welfare, disposals of wastes, offals,
and “5th quarter” by-products, and they suffer from
slim profit margins and from imports from other countries
that, they claim, undermine their endeavours for improvements.
Such complaints and excuses are common all through farming
economics. The strength of the pound (as it affects imports
and exports of foods, feeds, fertilisers, etc.) is also adduced
in pleas that invariably invoke the level playing field.
11.4 Farmers also lament the power of the supermarkets, through
which customers exert much more muscle than heretofore and
sometimes unsettle agricultural policies with importunate
and fickle innovations. Farmers have brought some the these
consequences on their own reading of the market or errors,
e.g. in producing too much animal fat and in failing to avert
food “scares”. It is difficult to assess whether
conversions and reforms in farming, e.g. for organic and non-GM,
will be completed before this opportunity for value-adding
exhausts itself. As an example, the supply of organic milk
now exceeds the demand. Will the international companies and
legislators overcome the anti-GM campaign, and when? We urge
the Government to work with farmers, manufacturers, and retailers
to favour co-operative enterprises to explore innovations
that answer demands for research and reforms in the interests
of human and animal welfare and health and for the environment.
We must not allow level playing field arguments to halt or
suppress continuing improvements on these social issues. It
is an indictment of latter-day British agricultural applications
in these connections that we are being surpassed by Scandinavian
countries. The Government can honourably restore Britain’s
status in such reform. It is a constant challenge and we duck
our responsibilities by exporting the problems.
11.5 British farming will provide a diminishing quantity
and choice in the British food-supply. The Government’s
economists must calculate show far we can regulate and accommodate
the demand for imports and how much can be saved by improvements
in safety, health, the environment, social services and rural
life at home by salutary initiatives towards low-input mixed
farming and forestry improvement. The countryside is an invaluable
asset in amenity, leisure, and holiday opportunities, offering
outlets for diversification for the farming industry, notably
for tourism. Farming interests overdo the benefits they and
their animals have brought to our landscapes. In fact, the
visitor to the countryside sees too many fertiliser bags flapping
in the breeze, abandoned equipment endangering the animals,
many of which are limping, the lambs doing their best in overstocked
and depleted areas less favoured for livestock, and many ugly
units crammed with thousands more lame and unhappy animals.
Farmers must increasingly become custodians: we need more
national parks, as well as wilderness, which is the natural
habitat of wild life and a territory for the occasional intrepid
human wanderer.
11.6 Slaughterhouses are hardly an uplifting aspect of country
life. Statistics on the numbers of slaughterhouse are better
cited in terms of capacity and accessibility measured in working
days. Any of these premises is a blemish on the rural scene,
but a full service for casualty slaughter will have to be
maintained. Abolition of hunting (either by law or, as now,
by the consequences of FMD) will need overhaul of the provision
for casualty slaughter, knackers’ yards, and disposals.
The FMD epidemic has finally taught the inadequacy and hazards
associated with the livestock markets and dealers. Alternatives
must be developed so that animals are involved in as few journeys
as possible and travel directly in journeys of short duration
from farm to slaughterhouse. Loading and unloading and mixing
groups cause most stress; suitably-designed vehicles can be
driven on short journeys with little distress in the animals
(although pigs suffer from motion sickness).
11.7 Britain is overpopulated in domestic livestock, of the
human kind and comprising pets and farm animals. The concentration
and overstocking, especially in England, militate against
a comfortable existence. The contrary efforts at stimulating
the reproduction of farm animals while curbing increases in
the human population are misguided. The recommended changes
in consumption and reduction of intensive farming would relieve
the crowding, but examples in the Royal Family and by the
Prime Minister and his wife indicate that their efforts for
sustainability in the human species ignore the signal advances
in lowering the culling implicated in juvenile mortality (farmers
and vets are much less effective in the animals in their care).
Demographers must advise on the pressure of human populations
and of their ageing and consequences on the quality of life.
Restoration of farming fortunes must comprehend the price
of land and the ability of skilled workers to populate villages
in affordable accommodation. Speculators buying up farms with
the view to develop only the buildings for non-farming purposes
must be deterred unless such investments comply with tasteful
alterations for tourist purposes. Increasing prosperity has
led to a demand for second homes in the country. This trend
may be beneficial if the incomers try to integrate into country
life in a discreet way and display more commitment than popping
down on the occasional weekend into property that is vacant
for most of the week.
11.8 Government initiatives to raise the value of food and
the worth of farming and rural life will raise prices paid
in the ships but relieve the Exchequer of the heavy burden
of aid it is committed to at the moment. Poor people will
have to be helped in a better way than through the few welfare
foods and medicaments they may now be able to claim. Present
systems of subsidy have the effect of benefiting the big spenders
on food more than the poor. Food subsidies would be much better
directed selectively at the needy, whose choice and diets
are already poor and whose health is disproportionately compromised.
Choice and variety account for much of the pleasure of a varied
diet. Citizenship, which would include subjects such as home
economics, food production, and nutrition, should be included
in school syllabuses, and school meals (which could advantageously
include breakfasts) should be competently and imaginatively
offered. Administration of benefits on foods by, say, vouchers
should be explored. Its effect has a value beyond remedying
the frank signs of classical deficiency diseases such as anaemia,
scurvy, and rickets but also to inadequacies in cognition
and behaviour and the decline into depression and inanition.
Provisions for the elderly should accommodate their special
needs with tasty and nutrient-dense fare.
11.9 Definitions of poverty and the need for aid in purchases
of food are sometimes muddied by descriptions of rights to
buy certain high-quality foods based on their contents of
calories and protein. This right has been excessively applied,
to the detriment of healthy choices for supposedly expensive
foods such as fruit and vegetables. Few people aspire to exercise
their right to eat meat and fish with frequent meals of fillet
steak and caviar. Adjustments of taxes and subsidies must
reflect the broader values of nutrition and health, in harmony
with the reforms we recommend, for they represent tactics
within strategies to overcome the tragic inequalities of wealth
among citizens of a nation purporting examples of lifestyle
for primitive and developing communities to follow. A fundamental
right in this context is the support and accommodation of
breast-feeding well beyond the average performance in England
and nearer, for the health of mother and child, the practice
in supposedly primitive communities.
12. Conclusions
Urgent changes in farming as a result of BSE and FMD will
dictate almost a halving of home production of beef in little
more than a decade. The threat of BSE masked by scrapie in
sheep could tell the end or at least a break in home-produced
sheepmeat. Opportunities have vanished for the export trade.
We descry opportunities for bold initiatives out of the ills
of live/deadstock industry and the toll it has taken of the
nation’s health and environment. Adjusting taxes and
subsidies with the provision of an unequivocally healthy and
enjoyable basis, together with subventions for custody of
the environment, support for rural economies and communities
and for animal welfare, are achievable long-term aims.
Animal-derived foods must incur selective impositions of
VAT, as a sharp indicator of the costs incurred by the nation,
by way of subsidies and compensation, in the production of
foods whose consumption should fall, in the first instance,
by about 10%. Nutritional and dietary benefits would ensue
and the pernicious trends of cheap food policies and intensification
for quality rather than quantity must be reversed. This policy
reflects true costs met at the till, rather than large amounts
subsumed in payments by taxpayers.
The price of food to the consumer must rise to accommodate
the increasing costs of training and monitoring right through
the food-production chain. Food would achieve its rightful
place in the allocation of outgoings by citizens in the UK.
Our recommendations would entail a trend towards low input,
low-footprint husbandry, improved care and amenity in the
countryside and wild habitats, and it would order the now-established
demand for year-round out-of-season supplies into responsible
forms of trading and importation, exploiting the expansion
of local farming at least to the bounds of the EU and subsequently
to the choices offered (but not necessarily accepted) in global
trading.
Some subventions would have to be moved to enable poor people
the means of choosing and buying the essentials of a healthy
and varied diet. This should be only an expedient not a substitute
for the removal of such poverty among our community nor for
responsibilities in the countries with which we trade.
The Farming and Food Commission hasn’t the competence,
nor has it been given the time, to appraise these bold and
salutary changes. More decades of fudge and mudge will harm
national esteem and invite further ruinous drawings on the
Treasury. Reforms of the CAP must be anticipated. If the Commission
has been denied time, so have commentators in the numerous
groups, many being NGOs, with experience in issues of farming,
food, health, and the land. Their testimony cannot be collated
with the speed with which the vast food-industry can mobilize.
The Commission should therefore spend its first few months
engaged in research, education, and hearings before embarking
on pronouncements acknowledging the importance in wresting
advantage out of the sad legacy of bad policies and malign
husbandry. The exhaustive report of the Phillips BSE Inquiry
demands thoughtful attention and deserves close study.
Abbreviations
BSE Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy
BVDV Bovine Viral Diarrhea Virus
CSF Classical Swine Fever
FMD Foot and Mouth Disease
FSA Food Standards Agency
GM Genetically Modified
MHS Meat Hygiene Service
MAFF Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food
(now DEFRA, Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
MLC Meat and Livestock Commission
NGO Non-Government Organization
RSPB Royal Society for Protection of Birds
RSPCA Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty of Animals
SE Spongiform Encephalopathy
SEAC Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee
VAT Value Added Tax
VEGA Vegetarian Economy and Green Agriculture
WTO World Trade Organization
Dr Alan Long, Research Adviser, VEGA.
30th October 2001
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