Well, that’s what the Daily Mail appears to be saying, anyway. I saw their headline yesterday and couldn’t believe that even the Mail could be so stupid. 
Basically, after all the crap they’ve been publishing about fast food and pre-cooked meals being bad for you (the Mail has a food section which goes to town over this several times a week, comparing the poor health implications of each product), they are now warning people off fresh meat – and not for any health-based reason, but because in Britain we are apparently riding the razor’s edge, with food shortages.forever only a hair’s breadth away.
Of course, blame is laid at the feet of MPs, though it is done in such a way that the reader doesn’t have a bloody clue what was actually said and has to rely on The Mail’s interpretation. The story meanders through the comments made by various farmers’ associations and unions, apparently in response to The Mail’s headline, and proceeds as though somewhere, someone had actually spoken the exact words of that headline. And yet nothing in the bulk of the report confirms that this is what was said, and reading between the lines you can detect some cack-handed political machinations, suitably mangled by The Mail’s hacks in their typical amateurish way.
Can you even begin to imagine how or why any politician would want to make such ill-informed comments about an industry which is already suffering due to the economy and the recent weather?
…Sir Malcolm Bruce, the Lib Dem chairman of the Commons committee, said: ‘With the UK never more than a few days away from a significant food shortage, UK consumers should also be encouraged over time to reduce how often they eat meat…
Actually, that has always been the case, and it isn’t – as The Mail’s creative cut seems to imply – a new development. Britain is a small island with a high population density vying with what cultivable land it possesses, and it relies heavily on imports. It has to, and has had to for a very long time now. In the Glorious Imperial Age (that the UKIP would see us return to in its dreams), we just took what we wanted and shot anyone who argued. When that approach was no longer viable – and we’re talking more than a century ago now – we had to start buying it in. And that’s where we stand right now here in the 21st Century.
We couldn’t just “pull up the drawbridge”, as many of those who are leaning towards the UKIP from the LibCons would have us believe.
The farmers are right to be worried. If some idiot politician stops people from buying a certain food – even a few of them – then farmers will have to stop producing so much of it. That will then send prices sky-high (and meat isn’t cheap even now), which will cut demand still further. Farmers will turn over even more land (if they can – the land used to raise meat often can’t be used for crops) to things like Oil Seed Rape, and the nation will get ever more unhealthy on poor quality ready meals, most of which are imported, or use imported meat products.
A cynic might see a purpose in any government involvement in such stupid advice. Oil Seed Rape has a high value – and making more money would fuel economical growth in the (very) short term. Of course, it is also used in the production of bio-diesel, and any country which produces a lot of it might win whatever “green” badges are up for grabs at any given moment.
But any economic benefit would undoubtedly be short-lived. High prices can only be commanded when there is a demand, and the bottom could fall out of the Rape market overnight. All it takes is another European country to start getting decent crops (by foolishly getting rid of the ones people actually need) and we’ll be having pointless “buy British Rapeseed Oil” campaigns before you could sneeze. Mind you, that’d suit UKIP down to the ground.
However, longer term the loss of a meat industry (and all the other things that are “unhealthy”, like eggs) would cause massive and irreversible damage to the economy.