Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Complaint upheld over beef farming documentary
THE BBC has upheld a complaint made by the National Farmers’ Union about impartiality in the BBC1 documentary Meat: A Threat to Our Planet?
Broadcast on November 25 last year and presented by wildlife biologist Liz Bonnin, the programme sought to investigate the environmental impacts of livestock farming around the world, visiting colossal North American feed lots and Brazilian cattle ranches.
Almost immediately after it was aired, British and West Country farmers stressed the differences between UK and global meat production systems, claiming that the documentary had “tarred all beef production with the same brush”.
The NFU, which said the programme was biased in its treatment of livestock farming, escalated its complaint to Ofcom when the BBC failed to provide a timely response.
Minette Batters, president of the NFU, said the ruling, while a long time coming, provided “true vindication on the points we made about what we believed to be a lack of impartiality in this programme”.
Mrs Batters, a beef farmer herself in Wiltshire, added: “British farmers are rightly proud of the work they do to rear quality livestock and care for the environment, and they were angry and hurt by the false impression of UK livestock farming the programme created for the viewer at home.” She said grassbased systems, such as those seen across the South West, are “incomparable” with the intensive feed-lot style systems shown in the programme.
Mrs Batters continued: “In Britain we have some of the most climatefriendly systems of food production in the world. Emissions from UK beef production are already half that of the global average and our farmers are working to become net-zero by 2040.”
Ofcom ruled that viewers only received “a partial analysis of the impact of livestock farming on the global environment and biodiversity, based almost exclusively on intensive farming methods”.
The regulator went on to add that the relative environmental impact of non-intensive systems of livestock farming was an “important consideration for viewers when assessing the environmental impact of meat production globally, and when considering what the invitation to reduce or eliminate meat consumption might mean in the UK context”.
Fran Barnes, NFU communications director, said: “While we acknowledge the apology, we would like the BBC to go further and commit to redressing the balance in future programming to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
British farmers were hurt by the false impression of UK livestock farming the programme created MINETTE BATTERS, NFU