Opinion: Politicians must remember ‘inconvenient truths’

The political scene now seems a more crowded minefield for agriculture.

For instance, the recent Trump-May accord in Washington pushed to the fore the knotty issue of standards of production and trade deals between the UK and the US.

Suddenly, hormones in beef and chlorine in chicken were all over the media. This is a moment for British farmers to talk up our high standards.

© Terry Whittaker/FLPA/Imagebroker/Rex/Shutterstock

See also: Farmers take ‘intensive care’ of the countryside

As the secretary of state, no less, has recently reminded us, Britain has the third-highest animal welfare standards in the world – only behind Switzerland and Finland.

As farmers, we should be rightly proud of these high standards and trumpet them as loudly as possible.

However, we also need to make the point that our high standards increase our costs of production.

Guy Smith comes from a mixed family farm in Essex and is NFU vice-president

Our political masters and trade negotiators will need reminding clearly and loudly for the next few years they should not do trade deals that give competitors access to our markets if they don’t adhere to our standards of production or if they have access to technologies that are not allowed on British farms.

To do so would be to sell our own farmers down the free-trade river and the consequence would be to suck in more exports from other places in the world where standards and costs of production are lower.

Farming in New Zealand

It seems fashionable at the moment for some politicians and commentators to parade New Zealand as some sort of model that the UK should follow.

Those same politicians and commentators need reminding there are key differences between the UK and New Zealand.

The population density in New Zealand is a fraction of that in the UK. Land pressures aside, you could also look at the difference in animal health policies and, in particular, the Kiwi approach to tackling bovine TB.

In 1990, the proportion of TB in cattle was about seven times greater than it was in Great Britain. Today it is 40 times less. Although it is difficult to generalise, one key difference was the approach to controlling TB in the wildlife vector.

Approach to TB

In the 1990s, the use of 1080 poison in New Zealand peaked in order to reduce possum numbers (the possum being the main wildlife TB vector).

I have a sister who lives in New Zealand and I remember visiting her in the 1990s and being boggle-eyed at reports that the Kiwis were dropping carrots dipped in 1080 by air into their forests. I remember thinking to myself that it wouldn’t go down well in the home counties. 1080 is sodium fluoroacetate, which is highly toxic to mammals – 5mg/kg will kill a person.

It is illuminating to contrast this with the fact that recently in the UK the wildlife lobby have been pushing the authorities to restrict farmers access to rat poison because it was turning up in the livers of non-target species such as red kites and buzzards.

I remember being rushed into the relevant ministry at the time to point out that since new-generation rat poison was introduced in the 1990s, red kite and buzzard numbers have increased massively.

We still ended up with restrictions, but nothing like as bad as was originally proposed. And while we are on the subject of wildlife control, let’s remember in much of continental Europe, badger hunting is a legal sport.

I’m not advocating the aerial dropping of carrots dipped in 1080 or badger hunting for the UK – both would be highly inappropriate.

However, when politicians start waxing lyrical about modelling ourselves on different agricultures or doing trade deals with other nations, they need to be aware of all the facts, not just the ones they find convenient.