{"id":12925,"date":"2013-06-05T17:02:38","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T16:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=12925"},"modified":"2013-06-05T17:02:38","modified_gmt":"2013-06-05T16:02:38","slug":"official-if-you-eat-food-the-world-will-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=12925","title":{"rendered":"Official: If You Eat Food, The World Will End!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, that\u2019s what the Daily Mail appears to be saying<\/a>, anyway. I saw their headline yesterday and couldn\u2019t believe that even the Mail could be so stupid. \"Steak\"Basically, after all the crap they\u2019ve 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<\/strong> meat – and not for any health-based reason, but because in Britain we are apparently riding the razor\u2019s edge, with food shortages.forever only a hair\u2019s breadth away.<\/p>\n

Of course, blame is laid at the feet of MPs, though it is done in such a way that the reader doesn\u2019t have a bloody clue what was actually said and has to rely on The Mail\u2019s interpretation. The story meanders through the comments made by various farmers\u2019 associations and unions, apparently in response to The Mail\u2019s 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\u2019s hacks in their typical amateurish way.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

\n

\u2026Sir 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\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Actually, that has always been the case, and it isn\u2019t – as The Mail\u2019s 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<\/strong> 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\u2019re talking more than a century ago now – we had to start buying it in. And that\u2019s where we stand right now here in the 21st Century. <\/p>\n

We couldn\u2019t just \u201cpull up the drawbridge\u201d, as many of those who are leaning towards the UKIP from the LibCons would have us believe. <\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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\u2019t 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. <\/p>\n

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 \u201cgreen\u201d badges are up for grabs at any given moment. <\/p>\n

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\u2019ll be having pointless \u201cbuy British<\/strong> Rapeseed Oil\u201d campaigns before you could sneeze. Mind you, that\u2019d suit UKIP down to the ground. <\/p>\n

However, longer term the loss of a meat industry (and all the other things that are \u201cunhealthy\u201d, like eggs) would cause massive and irreversible damage to the economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, that\u2019s what the Daily Mail appears to be saying, anyway. I saw their headline yesterday and couldn\u2019t believe that even the Mail could be so stupid. Basically, after all the crap they\u2019ve been publishing about fast food and pre-cooked meals being bad for you (the Mail has a food section which goes to town […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[93,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-related","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}