Vicki Hurd: We need to buy meat that's British born, bred... and fed

Environment Secretary Hilary Benn has proudly announced a scheme intended to ensure that pork products claiming to be British will have been made from pigs that were born and bred in Britain.

Is this a step in the right direction or another disappointment for our long-suffering farmers?

To many shoppers it must seem extraordinary that meat labelled British isn't always British.

Yet because of an EU loophole, we can't be sure where our pork and bacon comes from, even if its packaging is adorned with a union jack and a typically British countryside image.

This misleading system has led to a chorus of complaints. People quite rightly want to know where their food comes from, and many are concerned about reports that the animal welfare standards in other European countries are well below ours in the UK.

The scheme unveiled this week won't do very much to help consumers feel confident about the source and impact of their food choices.

For a start, it's a voluntary scheme that meat producers, shops and canteens can choose to bypass if they want to cut their costs by importing cheaper cuts.

Food companies and supermarkets have a long history of ignoring the voluntary systems designed to keep them in check. Take a look at their treatment of farmers: after years of bully boy behaviour, a voluntary scheme was put in place in 2002 to redress the power balance between supermarkets and their suppliers. Eight years on the farmers are still being driven out of business by the supermarkets' continued more-for-less demands.

Even if the food industry was to stop mistreating farmers and misleading the public – unlikely, given their past behaviour and the Government's reluctance to make them play fair – there's a very meaty hidden issue that the Government is turning a blind eye to: UK factory farms are wiping out rainforests in South America.

Factory farms rely on vast quantities of cheap and protein-rich animal feed to rear animals that grow quickly and produce high yields.

The bulk of this comes from heavily-subsidised imports of soy, grown in South America where forests are being cleared to make space for huge plantations. So far 90 per cent of the South American Atlantic Forest – home to 20,000 plant species – has been lost to soy farming and cattle ranching. If trends continue, it'll also wipe out 40 per cent of the Amazon rainforest by 2050.

To put it simply, Government-sponsored intensive farming is trashing precious rain forests. By cutting down the Earth's lungs, we're releasing frightening quantities of carbon dioxide and pushing further and further towards dangerous climate change.

So why can't British farmers grow animal feed over here? At the moment, there is no market – and no support – for farmers to grow protein crop feed in the UK. With supermarkets putting pressure on farmers to produce food for the lowest possible price, they have no option but to intensify their farms. This reliance on imports is leaving farmers very vulnerable: when there are sudden shocks in global markets, the cost of animal feed rockets and farmers over here are squeezed even further – it's no wonder that we're losing 4,000 jobs in farming every year.

So far, Hilary Benn's department is refusing to step in and support farmers to protect themselves and the planet by changing their farming methods. In fact, they're skirting the issues, denying the evidence and continuing to spend more than 700m of taxpayers' money each year on factory farming.

But MPs around the country are waking up to the damaging impact of factory farming – a third of them have signed a petition in Parliament backing planet-friendly farming. But more needs to be done if we're to help farmers to make the change. Friends of the Earth is continuing to raise the issue up the agenda and is calling for a new law – that supermarkets and food companies can't opt out of – to reduce the impact of our meat and dairy industries.

Most people would rather not eat a bacon butty that's helping to wipe out rainforests, but at the moment there are few alternatives. The Government must support planet-friendly British farming by helping farmers to grow animal feed here in the UK and provide shoppers with meat that's UK born, bred and fed – and help people to make the right choices.

Vicki Hurd is a senior food campaigner at the Friends of the Earth. For more information on its Food Chain Campaign see www.fixthefoodchain.com