The Agriculture Bill could destroy British farming - Yorkshire Post Letters

IS it the end of British farming? In last week’s Farmers Weekly a farmer vented his frustration at government neglect of British farming.

He could not believe Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan’s claim that her deal to import New Zealand lamb wouldn’t affect British farmers because, she said, British lamb was “seasonal”!

After saying that the Prime Minister would not get his vote again, the farmer concluded: “The world has gone bonkers.”

It’s true. The 2020 Agriculture Bill could destroy British farming.

This government gives the impression that any trade deal is far more important than the health of our farming community or the quality of our food.

The National Farmers’ Union condemned the bill for “absence of …any means of upholding British farming production standards in the context of international trade negotiations”.

“UK farmers’ efforts,” they wrote, could “be undermined through the importation of products not produced to the same level of environmental or animal health/welfare standards expected of them domestically.”

Are we heading for yet another broken manifesto promise, this time on food quality and animal welfare?