Public needs educating about imported v British food

I READ with interest Emily Beament’s WMN article on Wednesday 30th September, regarding the RSPB’s proposals to address biodiversity loss and the climate crisis.

The RSPB’s outlook is nothing more than the ethos British agriculture has held for many years. Their chief executive Beccy Speight is reported on www.thirdsector.co.uk as earning £145,683 in the 2017/18 financial year.

For that salary, I would have thought the RSPB’s CEO should be actively constructive in lobbying policy makers (nationally and internationally), and educating the public to raise awareness of the consequences of their shopping habits.

Many migratory species make seasonal visits to the UK. Some are butterflies, many are birds. Take the cuckoo. Recent reports suggest habitats in areas of Spain (on the cuckoo’s migratory flight path to certain areas of Britain) are declining, therefore reducing feeding areas while the birds are en route to and from their British breeding grounds.

Cuckoos arriving in other areas of the UK are thought to migrate via a different route (Italy) and haven’t been so adversely effected.

Lobbying of Spanish and/or international policymakers would seem more constructive than targeting British land managers, who are already providing enhanced habitats with the biodiversity to successfully support the cuckoo’s parasitic breeding behaviour.

Farmland covers about 70% of Britain’s land mass. Although always striving to improve, UK agriculture is a world-leader in sustainable farming. One example is soya meal: this is being replaced in feed rations by distillers grains or maize/wheat meal, therefore removing the reliance on protein sources from unsustainable and environmentally damaging systems overseas. Reduced transport miles are an additional bonus in this scenario as the alternative proteins are often grown here in the UK. But this commitment costs, price wise.

As British produce is regulated to ensure good practise standards are met, it’s more expensive to produce than a lot of imported food.

With Brexit trade deals moving apace hidden behind Covid news, the RSPB would do well to prioritise influencing our food and trade policies over home-habitats at this time. The current pandemic has shown our reliance on imported consumables and supply routes to be frail when put under pressure; surely this is a moment of opportunity to ensure all food available in the UK is produced to robust criteria?

My larder is stocked with food grown/produced to British Red Tractor assured standards because I buy that knowing it has come out of a stringent system. We eat apples in the autumn, and strawberries in the summer; and they taste better for being seasonal.

My response to Beccy Speight’s call for the UK to lead the way on ‘recovery of nature’ is this: the majority of UK land managers are already leading the world in protecting the environment and enhancing wildlife habitats; the rest of the world’s major food producers urgently need to be persuaded to catch up. It’s a sad fact of life that money makes the world go round.

This is why pressure from reputable bodies needs to be applied to policy makers and political trade brokers. And why the Great British public need educating about how imported food differs from British produce.