The debate over food standards in the UK has moved a bit in the last week or two. Below is a letter I wrote to a local paper earlier this year when the Agriculture bill was having the second reading in the House of Commons.
Dear Editor,
Last week, in this newspaper our two local MPs professed support for UK farmers and high food production standards. What they were careful to not tell your readers was that they had both recently voted against and defeated an amendment to the Agriculture Bill that would have prevented importation of food produced to lower standards than allowed in the UK.
The defeat of the amendment now potentially allows the extra-ordinary situation where consumers will be eating imported food that would be illegal to produce in the UK.
In the event of a trade deal with the USA we will most likely be importing food that is produced to much lower environmental standards, by methods that are called cruel if practiced in the UK and eating meat treated as standard with hormones and antibiotics, which only increases the evolution of ever more resistant bacteria.
It is significantly cheaper to produce food in this way and it will be very damaging to our farmers and the industries around agriculture if they must abide by different rules.
Recent newspaper polls suggest that there is overwhelming support in the country for maintaining high food standards and current world events are showing us just how important it is to maintain self-sufficiency in some critical products. What could be more critical than our food?
In my opinion, it cannot be in the interests of our fellow constituents to ship food from thousands of miles away, to ruin a vital local industry and to jeopardise public health.
Our MPs are saying one thing and doing another, perhaps pressured to obey the party line over the interests of their constituents. They are new MPs but already they are in danger of breaking manifesto commitments. I hope we can persuade them to do better.
Yours sincerely,
Robin Buck
Unlimited imports of North American commodities has caused two agricultural recessions in our history, in the 19th Century and in the 20th. It will certainly cause a third in this century if we allow it and at the same time do enormous damage to our animal welfare and probably public health as well.
However, the pressure applied by campaigners has persuaded the government to establish The Trade and Agriculture Commission which now is authorised to report on the likely impact of any trade deal on farming and food standards. This will be presented to Parliament for a period of 21 days before the deal is approved so at least if the government does wish to allow substandard food to undermine our industry our MPs will not be able to claim ignorance.
I do wonder, though, once the deal is in action, if it can be quietly altered without parliamentary scrutiny. Am I being unkind to our legislators?