The Meatrix is committed to helping educate people around the world about the issues of sustainability, specifically in terms of food production and consumption. This action page is a way for us to communicate with the concerned people in the United Kingdom, to encourage them to take action locally, but also to exchange information and experiences at the international level. We hope to create a network of concerned people, communities and organizations around the world that all join together to promote more sustainable food production and consumption patterns.
This action page will provide you with information on the agricultural situation in the UK, on like-minded organizations that operate in the country, as well as with background information about the Meatrix series. Please send us any information or updates you feel should be added to Giuseppina Pagano at gpagano@fwwatch.org.
About the UK
United Kingdom: The “Outsourcing” of Agricultural Production
Within the European context, the UK holds a peculiar position as far as industrial agriculture is concerned. Although factory farming developed early in the country – just as in other Northern European countries, in the 1970s – the sanitary crises that repeatedly hit the British livestock sector in the late 1990s have led to a general questioning of the industrial agricultural model. However, instead of boosting a sustainable, domestic mode of meat production, the UK has turned to importing industrially produced meat from abroad. It is therefore actually “outsourcing”1 its agricultural production, relying on food being produced cheaply abroad, albeit under lax or no sanitary, environmental and animal welfare regulations.
Sanitary crises: the result of industrial farming
The UK has paid a heavy price for allowing industrial livestock production to develop on its territory. In 1999, the UK had among the highest average number of hogs per farm in the EU (584 hogs per farm compared to the EU average of 123). More than 80% of the production was controlled by large farms containing more than 1000 hogs per unit.
These large hog, as well as cattle, operations extensively used flour made of ground up animal corpses as a complement to the corn usually present in the animal feed. As a consequence, when the foot-and-mouth disease hit Europe in 1999, the blow inflicted to the UK meat sector was particularly hard. Thousands of cattle had to be culled and their carcasses burnt in order to prevent a further spread of the pandemic. Unlike the UK, those countries that had avoided adding animal flour to feed, and instead fed cattle predominantly on pastures, were spared the worst and remained relatively safe. Because the UK was hit hard not only by the foot-and-mouth disease, but also by the outbreak of swine fever and the mad cow disease, British opinion eventually recognised the excesses of industrial agriculture and identified them as the direct cause of the pandemics. This contributed to the implementation of much stricter sanitary rules.
Strong animal welfare regulation
The UK has a long history of animal welfare regulation. Farm animals are protected by the 1968 Agricultural Act, the 2000 Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations (England) and several codes of practice concerning each animal. These regulations are by far stricter than EU regulations and also much better enforced. Hogs, for instance, must lie on straw and not on concrete, as is commonly the case in factory farms. They must also be allowed enough space to move around and frolic, and must not be kept in individual boxes.
Loss of competitiveness
However progressive these sanitary and animal welfare regulations may be, they have unfortunately led to a loss of competitiveness for UK producers with regard to other EU farmers who face much more lenient regulations. While British production keeps declining, imports of low-quality meat from factory farms abroad are growing rapidly.
With domestic production declining, the number of UK farms has also been diminishing, particularly in the hog sector: Hog fattening operations fell from 10.000 units to 6.900 (from 1997 to 2003), and hog breeders dropped from 9.800 units to 5.400 (from 1997 to 2004).
Conclusion
The British example illustrates the need for harmonised EU standards at a high level. This is necessary so that “good pupils” such as the UK are not penalised more than less vigilant countries. The British case also serves as proof that developing high environmental and animal welfare regulations is not enough, if at the same time farmers are not provided with the means to cope with such strict regulations. This scenario may actually hurt farmers and lead to the disappearance of sustainable farms, which ultimately benefits neither the environment nor animals.
For all these reasons, state intervention must play a key role in ensuring that high-quality agriculture remains strong enough to supply safe, healthy food for the entire population.
For more information:
- UK Agriculture
- Corporate Watch, A Rough Guide to the UK Farming Crisis, 2004
Agriculture in the UK: A Farmer’s Perspective
Agriculture in the UK: A Farmer’s Perspective
As a family farmer in Britain facing making decisions on how to be able to survive as a farmer in the future, it is a difficult time given the lack of importance given to agriculture and food production by both political thinking and by most British consumers.
The future of agriculture in Britain was I think made clear at a seminar that I was a speaker at recently. I had spoken of the value of the family farm and the importance of the food they produce, the bio-diversity, the landscape and environment that family farms brings to the countryside.
After I had finished speaking and was answering questions, a Professor on rural affairs from one of our universities and at times an adviser to the government stood up and made the following statement. "That I had or did not understand or see the situation in Britain correctly". He went on to explain why, "Because Britain was now in a post-agricultural era and the role agriculture and farmers was no longer about food production, because we could now buy our food on the world market for a lot less money than Britain's farmers could produce. The future for farmers and our rural areas was now about the landscape, the environment and the access to the countryside for leisure and the enjoyment of the non rural population and to do that we did not need so many farmers".
It is also clear that the British government by their actions and policies, also does not consider agriculture or food production of any importance, I am sure they too believe that Britain is in a post-agriculture era, and therefore they do not consider the people in agriculture as important either. That thinking also shapes they're thinking on the future of agriculture in Europe and the CAP.
The government has also always thought that having less farmers farming bigger farms was the future for agriculture as it is their belief that big equals an efficient and profitable industry.
Culture and people play no part in that industrial future.
So we have seen a large movement of people out of agriculture over recent years. Between 1997 and 2004 (the last year of official figures) 80,000 farmers and farm workers left agriculture nearly 25 % of the 1997 total. Of those that are left in agriculture now there are more part time farmers and workers than full time. Since 2004 it is clear we have lost more farmers and workers, probably another 15,000 to 20,000 people.
If I draw a 2-km circle around my farm and count the farms and people in 1997 there were 42 family farms with 43 families and 14 farm workers. Now in 2006 there are still 42 farms but only 13 farming families who now farm the 42 farms and there are only 5 or 6 workers. The houses and buildings on many of those farms have been sold and the land sold or leased to the remaining farmers so it is very unlikely that those farms will ever be separate farms again. The loss of those farming families has also changed the rural community with a movement of non-farming people into the farmhouses, with little or no understanding of rural life or culture. The landscape is changing too, as a farmer I can see it but to those without the eyes of a farmer it still looks the same.
But while the government wants to maintain the landscape and the way rural Britain looks now, they seem to forget that 85% of the landscape of Britain has been created by agriculture over many hundreds of years and the only real way to maintain it is for it to continue to be farmed for food. It will be impossible to maintain it as it looks, without animals grazing, or the diversity of changes created by the growing of crops.
But maybe in Britain we are in a post-agricultural era and farmers are to be park keepers maintaining the look of a food producing landscape without producing the food. But going back to my opening words about my own future, I am a farmer, a producer of food not a park keeper. So what do I do - maybe I should leave Britain and move to a country where food production is considered to still be the main role of a farmer, maybe I should move to France? I think they still want food-producing farmers.
Michael Hart, July 14, 2006
