Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Young BBC viewers told ‘eat green’ to save planet
Anti-farmer misinformation slipped into a Blue Peter script has Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative MP Ian LiddellGrainger – and a number of farming organisations – fuming, as he tells Defra Secretary George Eustice
DEAR George, I have come to understand that one should never underestimate the artfulness of the BBC, particularly when it comes to promoting its own narrow and extremely London-centric agenda.
Experience has taught me and many others that when dealing with the Beeb, one should never take one’s eye off the ball. Because if one does it will immediately get up to all kinds of antics, and such is currently the case.
As you may or may not have picked up, the BBC is taking something of a kicking from farming organisations for slipping some antilivestock propaganda into, of all arenas, Blue Peter. (And incidentally the fact that the chief complainants include the AHDB will be welcome confirmation for many farmers that at least it can get something right).
Young viewers were baldly fed the propaganda as part of a campaign to get them to strive for ‘green badges’ for doing their bit to save the planet. They were assured that one way of improving their green credentials would be to replace meat with vegetarian alternatives on the basis that “reducing the amount of meat you eat, especially beef and lamb, is known to be even better for the climate than reducing the amount you travel in a car”.
Piffle. That is based on flawed and now discredited research – but of course that’s not going to stop some vegan zealot of a scriptwriter perpetuating it. After all, it’s a simple matter to advance the defence that it was widely quoted on various platforms and it’s hardly the writer’s fault if she or he didn’t notice its subsequent rubbishing.
I hesitate to use the phrase but I think it is applicable: the BBC is setting out to poison young person’s minds in the most unbalanced way imaginable.
The Jesuits realised the value of indoctrinating a child before the age of seven – a stage in its development when influences will determine its behaviour throughout adult life. And the BBC appears to have taken its cue accordingly.
I am getting used by now to farmers complaining to me of imbalance and bias when green issues and the influence of agriculture are examined in TV programmes but targeting impressionable youngsters is, in my opinion, one underhand tactic too many.
It ranks alongside the actions of those parents who attempt to bring up their offspring on a vegan diet, ignoring all the (validated and peerreviewed) research suggesting that such children will suffer from stunted growth and the early onset of osteoporosis.
Fine, let children see what evidence there is to suggest that livestock farming is harmful to the planet.
But let it be presented in a balanced manner and above all in the proper context rather than being slipped in under the radar in this frankly shocking way.
Sadly the Vegan Tendency will stop at nothing in its mission to convert the world to a dairy-free, meatfree diet – though I did note one of the disciples who pens a column for a national publication complaining the other day that tea made with oat ‘milk’ tastes “awful”.
Well, no one’s forcing her to drink it.
Yours ever, Ian