In 1995 the UK agricultural industry contributed £10.3 bn or 1.6% of the national gross domestic product (GDP). Provisional statistics for 2000 show that the contribution from agriculture has fallen to £6.6 bn or 0.8% of the GDP. The number of people employed in agriculture in 2000 has fallen by 0.4% from the 1989-1991 average of 652,000 to 557,000.

The agricultural and horticultural census for the summer of 2001 reveals a reduction of 4.5% in the total area for crops; for cereals the drop is 4.9%, cattle and calf numbers have fallen by 4.8%, pigs by 9.8%, and sheep and lambs by 13%. Farming income and employment have declined accordingly and profit gaps have widened. Data from the Dept for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (formerly known as MAFF) illustrate how such gaps have opened up. For instance, oilseed rape costs £200 a ton to produce, including government subsidies, but it has been selling at £170 a ton.
A savoy cabbage costs 14p to grow, is sold by producers for 11p and costs 47p to buy in the supermarket.

Loving Animals — Roasted, Grilled, and Stewed

Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat
Please put a penny in the old man’s hat
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do
If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you!
Beggar’s Rhyme.

Festive Goose Christmas cards sold in support of the British Veterinary Association Animal Welfare Foundation — “improving the welfare of all animals through veterinary science, education, and debate”— suggest the need for some thought itself. Did the members ensure a festive Christmas for the festive goose? To be sure, geese — unlike turkeys, ducks, and chickens — aren’t reared intensively for the table, but they are cruelly exploited for pâté-de-foie gras. No VEGA ha’penny then for old hat from the BVAAWF.

Come to think of it, how did RSPCA members choose their festive greeting to the animal world? No turkeys are produced commercially to satisfy Freedom Foods stipulations. And it would be no good asking the RSPB for advice. Christmas has become a season to loosen belts and principles.

Carnage on a Road in Surrey

A lorry driver who created “motorway mayhem” when he plowed into a motorist on the M3 near Frimley in Surrey was sent on 23 November 2001 to 9 months in jail.

Doreen Grimmett of Staines died from severe head injuries after Michael Brown’s 38-ton “juggernaut” crushed her Nissan Micra, setting the car ablaze (Surrey Advertiser, 2 November 2001).

A jury at Blackfriars Crown Court took 3 hours to convict Brown, who was transporting 160 pigs from Pirbright, of causing death by dangerous driving. The court was told that Brown, who came from Somerset, was “completely oblivious” to Mrs Grimmett’s car as he rammed it at 55 mph with his lorry and trailer.

Giving evidence Brown pleaded that he had tried to slow down. “I touched the brake pedal gently to protect the livestock. If you brake harshly they could get bruised. They have to reach their destination in prime condition,” he said. Mrs Grimmett’s car was trapped under Brown’s lorry and pushed 145 metres along the motorway on 18 July 2000.

In the ensuing chaos, 13,000 people were trapped on the motorway “while 10 pigs were burnt to death in the fire which engulfed Brown’s trailer. Two animals managed to escape, running down a railway embankment, never to be seen again.”

This is an illustration of the evils in the transport of live farm animals between farms and markets and slaughterhouses, just within the UK. Pigs are susceptible to motion sickness and may consume piles of vomit before their journey’s end.

FALLEN STOCK

Our illustration , from ads in the farming press illustrates a problem familiar to animal welfarists: spent laying hens and breeding poultry are hardly worth the cost of slaughtering them, let alone transporting them to one of the few plants prepared to take them. This is a worldwide problem. In the UK imported (mostly from Thailand and Brazil) broilers bred oven-ready are cheap enough to fill requirements for manufacturing and catering meat that were previously met by slaughtering spent layers. Disposal of free-range and organic layers pose the same problems. Some poultry farmers are killing their end-of-lay hens and dumping them in pits as land-fill.

“WHY RISK YOUR REPUTATION FALLING OFF THE BACK OF A LORRY?”
When you could be incinerating your fallen birds for as little as 3p a kilo.

This advertisement, taken from Farmers Weekly magazine, is for on-farm incinerators for disposal of “fallen” stock, rather than throwing dead birds into a skip. This avoids “bad public reaction to seeing and smelling waste in transit.”

<< PAGE TOP >>