Knowledge is power in this animal feed case

News that the EU has now sanctioned the use of animal protein in farm feeds has disturbed Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger, he tells Defra Secretary George Eustice

DEAR George, Feeding ground-up chickens to pigs and ground-up pigs, sheep and cattle to chickens: I thought for a moment I was in some kind of nightmare but then I realised I actually was reading it.

As you will no doubt have read, equally, our former partners in Europe are about to lower the bar on animal feed standards in order that their farmers can compete on a level surface with cut-price imports from countries where (shall we say?) less salubrious and wholesome rearing conditions pertain, rather than having to play uphill, against the wind and with their boots tied together.

Fine. But may I draw the jury’s attention to the small matter of BSE, arguably the worst animal health catastrophe to befall British agriculture – in that it was a uniquely British problem, rather than a generic one such as foot-and-mouth.

You may also recall the global reaction to it: British beef was demonised. Export contracts were cancelled. British beef farmers achieved the distinction of becoming pariahs overnight. The stigmatisation that ensued was enormous. And lasting. For years afterwards the continentals were shaking their heads and muttering about, vache folle, verrückte Kuh, mucca pazza, boze koe and the rest.

Restaurants continued to display prominent signs informing their customers the beef came from France, Germany, Italy, Argentina, even Zambia – but definitely not from the UK.

The rehabilitation was a painfully long and hugely costly process. Yet now, it seems, it’s OK for a discredited practice to be reintroduced.

We have to concede that BSE was to a certain extent our fault in that British renderers were allowed to lower processing temperatures and that allowed scrapie-ridden sheep to infect cattle. But who’s to say errors won’t creep in once vast volumes of animal-based feeds are being processed across the Channel?

There are, however, some significant implications here because I can see our own farmers inquiring about a similar relaxation of the rules to keep their costs down and our meat exports competitive. And that is an eventuality I should be very unhappy about. As, indeed, I suspect, would be a great many consumers because our entire attitude to animal production standards has changed since the 1980s both in regard to welfare (hence the reaction against zerograzed beef and dairy production) and to feeding regimes. The vast majority of shoppers would not be terribly happy, I suggest, to be told that what they were consuming came from animals which had been fed the remains of other animals, however ‘safe’ they might be assured the process was.

Those of us who find the whole prospect abhorrent would, I should imagine, press for clear, mandatory labelling on both home-produced and imported meats to explain to consumers how the animals have been fed in order that informed choices can be made.

And I know which one I shall be making.

Yours ever, Ian

> The vast majority of shoppers would not be terribly happy to be told that what they were consuming came from animals which had been fed the remains of other animals, Ian suggests