Jamie Oliver Backs Farmers

Chae1

Member
Location
Aberdeenshire
You are being very blinkered. It won’t be a few people eating more veg , but the potential devastation of your beef farming that you will have to worry about . Can’t believe that someone with influence that can help our industry , is getting slagged off on here .
My opinion of him as a person is he's still a stroker. Regardless of his views. His jumping on the vegan bandwagon, making his letter public just confounded my opinion of him. Robt made a better job of explaining things above

He's a excellent chef I've used his recipes and we have several of his books in kitchen.

Plenty people think I'm a stroker too. There welcome to there opinion.
 

Sandpit Farm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
PR is about using influencers. He is an influencer whether you love him or hate him... let's take the PR and move on. People don't actually care where they hear things from they just know they've heard it from someone high profile.

I always hear farmers saying we need to educate people about where their food comes from. People genuinely don't care and will not be educated as it takes effort. They just get influenced by small punchy clips - something the vegan lobby excel in. On social media a video of butter melting on a crumpet or a cow having a scratch is far more impactful than an informative documentary about the impact of global trade on meat prices.

Jamie Oliver writing an open letter and bringing it to the fore forces the politicians to look at it. The NFU and friends can fill in the gaps on information etc.
 
Rightly or wrongly publishing the letter gives it more impact.
it appears to me all he has ever wanted to do was to improve the quality of the food/ ingredients in the food firstly of our children and then the wider public.
The diet in the uk is not balanced too many carbs too processed too much dairy too much meat. Getting it right would reduce obesity, diabetes, heart disease etc. help the planet and put ag on a more stable platform.
All laudable ambitions.
but apparently he’s a stroker for writing a few vegan recipes for an undeniably growing market.
It’s a sad sad world.
 

Sandpit Farm

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Derbyshire
If there is one man who should be representing British farming and food it is Hugh Fernlywhathisname.

Yes I like him but I find him a bit uncompromising. It has to be free range, organic etc. British farming is not like that other than niche. I thought the Chicken Run thing where he was trying to get council house families to buy £12 free range chickens was a bit unrealistic.
 

snarling bee

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Bedfordshire
A letter I wrote yesterday to my MP:-

Dear Nadine

I noticed that you did not vote for the Neil Parish amendment to the Agriculture Bill.

When you visited our farm last year, you were very vociferous in your views on animal welfare and live animal transport. So why vote to throw out an amendment that would have at least assured that meat imports would be produced to the high welfare standards that we have in this country.
We banned sow stalls in the UK in 1999, and yet they are still in use in many other countries.
Castration of piglets is still common in the EU, yet not practiced here.
In the USA beef is reared using hormones to accelerate growth of the animal, this is not allowed in the UK.
In the USA they do not change the litter or clean down their broiler units between batches, which they can get away with because they can wash the carcases in a chlorine solution. This practise is banned in the EU.
The law regarding battery cages was changed in the UK, so the cages were ripped out, bought by the Romanians, who now ship their eggs to the UK.
In China it was well publicised that thousands of pigs were buried alive in the African Swine Fever pandemic.

Are you suggesting we import meat from countries like that, whose view of animal welfare is so different from our own?

We have made huge strides in reducing antibiotic use in animal production in the UK, whilst elsewhere they have not. This has potentially massive impacts for global human health. In the UK between 2015 and 2017 we halved the antibiotic use in the pig industry, and further reductions have been made since then. In the USA they are still adding antibiotics to feed routinely, and treating pigs with antibiotics banned for animal use in the EU and without specific veterinary approval. In Thailand they are still using antibiotics on the critical list, and it is only recently that there was even a report on usage.

If we allow imports into this country, produced to a lower standard, that undercut our producers then there will be a lot of UK production shut down, and we will import even more of our food. This has implications for food security, balance of payments, GDP, employment, production standards and animal welfare. Are you going to be able to change, from Westminster, animal welfare standards in other countries?

You are happy to campaign to restrict live animal transport in this country, what are the live animal transport regulations elsewhere in the world?

I have had non farming constituents of yours contact me regarding your voting record in the Agriculture Bill. They are all concerned about food production standards and animal welfare with imported food. Many rural conservative MPs will lose votes on this issue, including you.

Kind regards
 

delilah

Member
A letter I wrote yesterday to my MP:-

Dear Nadine

I noticed that you did not vote for the Neil Parish amendment to the Agriculture Bill.

When you visited our farm last year, you were very vociferous in your views on animal welfare and live animal transport. So why vote to throw out an amendment that would have at least assured that meat imports would be produced to the high welfare standards that we have in this country.
We banned sow stalls in the UK in 1999, and yet they are still in use in many other countries.
Castration of piglets is still common in the EU, yet not practiced here.
In the USA beef is reared using hormones to accelerate growth of the animal, this is not allowed in the UK.
In the USA they do not change the litter or clean down their broiler units between batches, which they can get away with because they can wash the carcases in a chlorine solution. This practise is banned in the EU.
The law regarding battery cages was changed in the UK, so the cages were ripped out, bought by the Romanians, who now ship their eggs to the UK.
In China it was well publicised that thousands of pigs were buried alive in the African Swine Fever pandemic.

Are you suggesting we import meat from countries like that, whose view of animal welfare is so different from our own?

We have made huge strides in reducing antibiotic use in animal production in the UK, whilst elsewhere they have not. This has potentially massive impacts for global human health. In the UK between 2015 and 2017 we halved the antibiotic use in the pig industry, and further reductions have been made since then. In the USA they are still adding antibiotics to feed routinely, and treating pigs with antibiotics banned for animal use in the EU and without specific veterinary approval. In Thailand they are still using antibiotics on the critical list, and it is only recently that there was even a report on usage.

If we allow imports into this country, produced to a lower standard, that undercut our producers then there will be a lot of UK production shut down, and we will import even more of our food. This has implications for food security, balance of payments, GDP, employment, production standards and animal welfare. Are you going to be able to change, from Westminster, animal welfare standards in other countries?

You are happy to campaign to restrict live animal transport in this country, what are the live animal transport regulations elsewhere in the world?

I have had non farming constituents of yours contact me regarding your voting record in the Agriculture Bill. They are all concerned about food production standards and animal welfare with imported food. Many rural conservative MPs will lose votes on this issue, including you.

Kind regards

A very good letter, but it's stable doors and horses.
Where was the co-ordinated letter writing campaign from the NFU before the vote ?
The drippy hippies showed you how you run a campaign. 5,000 emails sent to MP's.
And what was on the NFU fb page on the same day ? nothing about the Agriculture Bill, but an offer of a 'back British farming' car sticker. FFS.

 

farmerandy78

Member
Arable Farmer
The market will dictate what happens - if the trade deals go the way that they seem to be going and with the ag bill, then surely we can look at this as an opportunity to get high quality british produce into the states. Americans have a high affection for the UK - I can see a good British steak going down well in NYC - it just needs good marketing.

There is too much negativity to something that looks like it is going to happen, farmers need to look at these trade deals as an opportunity and not a threat.
 

DRC

Member
The market will dictate what happens - if the trade deals go the way that they seem to be going and with the ag bill, then surely we can look at this as an opportunity to get high quality british produce into the states. Americans have a high affection for the UK - I can see a good British steak going down well in NYC - it just needs good marketing.

There is too much negativity to something that looks like it is going to happen, farmers need to look at these trade deals as an opportunity and not a threat.
I don’t think the trade deals are an issue .IF standards of imports are the same as the standards we have to adhere too. One rule for us and another for them, springs to mind !
Wonder where we’ve seen that recently ?
 

Henarar

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Somerset
Yes I like him but I find him a bit uncompromising. It has to be free range, organic etc. British farming is not like that other than niche. I thought the Chicken Run thing where he was trying to get council house families to buy £12 free range chickens was a bit unrealistic.
yes I watched that, It did make me laugh when they interviewed a bloke in a pub who had a pint in one hand and a fag in the other and he said he couldn't afford the more expensive chicken, which I think was a couple quid more
 

snarling bee

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Bedfordshire
A very good letter, but it's stable doors and horses.
Where was the co-ordinated letter writing campaign from the NFU before the vote ?
The drippy hippies showed you how you run a campaign. 5,000 emails sent to MP's.
And what was on the NFU fb page on the same day ? nothing about the Agriculture Bill, but an offer of a 'back British farming' car sticker. FFS.

I DID write to her before the vote as well.
There was a co-ordinated NFU letter writing campaign. You can't make members write, but the response was about as big as they have ever had IIRC.
 
The market will dictate what happens - if the trade deals go the way that they seem to be going and with the ag bill, then surely we can look at this as an opportunity to get high quality british produce into the states. Americans have a high affection for the UK - I can see a good British steak going down well in NYC - it just needs good marketing.

There is too much negativity to something that looks like it is going to happen, farmers need to look at these trade deals as an opportunity and not a threat.
It might come to that but it would be a bit of a ridiculous situation really, food exported from the USA to the U.K. and vice versa but I guess deep down no one really gives a fig about this carbon footprint mallarky
 

delilah

Member
I DID write to her before the vote as well.
There was a co-ordinated NFU letter writing campaign. You can't make members write, but the response was about as big as they have ever had IIRC.

If they know that the response was about as big as they have ever had, then they will know the number, would be interested to know what it was.
Either way, it was a missed opportunity for the NFU not to use their fb page to provide a means to email as the LWA did, they've got over 50k of people following it.
 

snarling bee

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Bedfordshire
If they know that the response was about as big as they have ever had, then they will know the number, would be interested to know what it was.
Either way, it was a missed opportunity for the NFU not to use their fb page to provide a means to email as the LWA did, they've got over 50k of people following it.
They know the number that used the NFU tool to write, but I wrote independently so I would not be counted.
Do MPs look at the NFU facebook page?
 

delilah

Member
They know the number that used the NFU tool to write, but I wrote independently so I would not be counted.
Do MPs look at the NFU facebook page?

no, sorry, I was meaning using the fb page to prompt a mass emailing of MP's. It is worth having a look at what the LWA did, they provided a template letter, a postcode based MP finder, all very clever but i'm sure simple for the IT people. If they got 5,000 people to write based on 9,000 followers of their page, then the NFU could and should have crashed MP's inboxes.
 

delilah

Member
I don't do FB or twitter, I spend enough time on here without doing those as well.

Very sensible, I load our fb page and follow the LWA and that's it, wouldn't have a clue how to twitter. But for the 50k supporters of UK agriculture who follow the NFU fb they missed a massive opportunity.

It is a month now since that crucial vote on the Agriculture Bill. In the last month there has been page after page after page on here moaning about the outcome. Where were the threads in the month before the vote giving people a step-by-step guide on how to lobby their MP ?
 
Latest post on Instagram from Jamie Oliver
 

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SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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