The Lie of the Land

[expatinscotland]

Anyone watching?

BB
I think I know the fellow you're talking about.

Yes, he was featured on the show.

Came across as just like all the others, who were all pretty screwed over by just about everything.

Sorry, but I hold this issue really close to my heart .

Don't believe in cruelty to animals?

Then open your eyes, smell the coffee and put your money where your mouth is. Stop funding it in your food choices.

Hell yeah!

Let's start with the crap cheap chickens they sell for £2.50 which are filled with water and God knows what else.

The sainted Hugh F-W once said that if you must buy from a supermarket, only buy lamb as it's the only meat breeders (or shall we say growers) can't fuck about with so much as it has to be raised pretty much free range.

And frankly, if people cannot cope with watching an animal being slaughtered [humanely] then they should be vegetarian.

Another point, which may have been made but not having seen it I don't know, is that since the BSE and foot & mouth crises, a lot of local slaughterers were put out of business. There used to be a guy here who ran a business called 'less stress' which did on-farm slaughter to avoid, obviously, less stress to the animal, it being killed on the farm. He's now out of business as it's now illegal. Technically, I, an inexperienced slaughterer, for want of a better word, could legally take out a shotgun and shoot a pig for the freezer, irrespective of how many cartridges I have to use, whilst a guy who knows his job, can't. Now that is wrong. Fortunately, our local place is only a 10 minute drive, but that is still stress. But they do a brilliant job, and have so many hurdles they now have to jump through, that you wonder why they don't just throw the towel in.

It's a very depressing situation, but again, the sad truth is that excellent programmes like this, and there have been others, are really only preaching to the converted. Only this week there was a story in the London Evening Standard about Gordon Ramsey carrying the carcass of a deer through his tv restaurant, and the horror of it. FFS, if you're gonna eat venison, you have to accept where it came from...

I too feel very strongly on this subject, but this government is simply not going to help as they are not interested in the countryisde. Not even that they're anti it, they just don't care, otherwise, why is Ben fing Bradshaw, also dealing with the enivronment & f knows what else beside farming?

They did indeed bring this up, BB, as a cattle farmer who used to drive his cows on foot to his neighbour's (who ran an abattoir) can no longer do so and now has to stress his cows out with a 100 mile journey.

He was stressed out from having to do that to his animals and it really, really bothered him.

I was unaware that this was even happening, but thanks to the show I do know now!

It didn't used to be that people ate so much meat, because there was no intensive farming and meat was expensive.

Now, people expect meat to be cheap and I suppose taht for Tesco shoppers, it is.

For most of the nation's food producers and for the animals, it's not.

Yes, I hate this. Chickens, historically, were THE most expensive meat until they started battery farming and if you've noticed, since recent publicity, producers have started cutting their legs shorter so you can't tell if they've got 'burn' which is an indication of intensively famred poultry that don't have the energy or space or strength to stand up in their sheds. Even the claim of 'free range' is a crock. it simply means that there is a hole in the shed that they can get out of, I don't know the stats off-hand, but all that really means is that 2,000 birds in cramped living conditions have access to a little outside space. So I only buy free range organic eggs, if I can, or at the 'farm gate' when I can.

Until something is done about importing meat from countries with lower wellfare standards than our own, than UK Farming plc doesn't stand a chance.

Not to mention the disease risk from importing food.

Said it once on this thread and will say it again, this will all come home to roost.

I couldn't agree more. The average age of a farmer in this county is now 50-something. As they retire their children [understandably] don't want to take on the pressure and stress, so it's a lot easier for them to sell on what could be a million pound property to a lifestyle buyer, which ultimately means that farming really is going down the pan.

We bought our farm because hubby's father had to sell up 30 years ago for family reasons, so there's a massive emotional investment here, but if he didn't have a 'proper' job, we couldn't keep it going economically, aside from letting out the land to potato growers or whatever. Which isn't the point if all your interested in is cattle. Unless you own bucketloads of acres, you simply can't do it.

The answer, in my very ignorant opinion, is to totally scrap the EU subsidies and control imports. There would be a massive shakedown, but ultimately, we would have a viable farming community. The problem is that if everyone bails out of farming, who's there to pick up the pieces afterwards?

And don't forget those poor farmers, sitting on 'valuable assets'? Their only choice might be to sell up and end up in some awful council estate in the middle of a town far removed from what they know and love. It's all just awful.

"since recent publicity, producers have started cutting their legs shorter so you can't tell if they've got 'burn' "

Boing, I knew about the ammonia burns from H F-W but I didn't know the supermarkets were hiding the evidence like that.

The happy pig market seems to have really taken off around here lately, so maybe you were just ahead of your time, or maybe this area is different - we are lucky that there is a really thriving farmers' market where the producers sell a lot.

I quite agree with your posts, and I can't help wondering if a Conservative government would sort things out a bit. I am not a natural Tory voter by any means, but I think this issue is hugely important. The find the idea that we are losing the people who know how to grow food very frightening.

'The find the idea that we are losing the people who know how to grow food very frightening. '

Tell me about it!

But I feel like Cassandra every time I try to open my mouth about it.

No one's listening.

We've visited our pig farmer several times.

Happy to report, business is doing well for them.

"I can't help wondering if a Conservative government would sort things out a bit"

I hope you're right, although as a dyed in the wool Tory, I'm honestly not sure. They may well pay lip service to it,and I wouldn't be at all surprised if they held an enquiry into the FMD fiasco, but I fear it may only be window dressing.

As Expat says, the whole farming industry (or what's left of it), has little sympathy from the country as a whole, as people, generally, are not interested. All they're interested in is getting food at the cheapest price they can, and holding their noses with regard to welfare conditions.
They don't care if this country is not self-sufficient, food-wise, because they can't envisage a future where imports wouldn't happen, or do not believe it could happen. But don't worry, when it does, our countryside will be a lovely, green, useless playground where nothing is grown because there are no farmers left, but it all looks simply lovely. hmmmm.

Yes, and not only will it look lovely, but it will be owned by a select few who have put their massive holiday homes on it and wouldn't dare want to use their precious land for something so banal and dirty as food production.

And then we will all be up to our knees in muck.

Fortunately, expat, we still have planning laws, so that can't happen. And if they tried, the ramblers and CPRE would be on them like a tonne of bricks (unless they successfully bribed the local planning department, of course).