Hurrah for New Labour!
Continuing my occasional series of them f***ing something up completely and then dreaming up more state intervention to f*** things up even more, here's Veggie Benn at his best:
A "radical rethink" of how the UK produces and consumes its food is needed, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn has warned.
He was speaking at the launch of the government's assessment of the threats to the security of what we eat. The food supply was currently secure but population growth and climate change could have an impact, he warned. Producers, supermarkets and consumers have been invited to suggest how a secure food system should look in 2030. Some of the findings from the consultation are expected to be published in the autumn.
As well as launching the consultation process, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has published a scorecard-style assessment of the current state of the UK's food supply. "It is to stimulate a debate within the UK on what a food policy should be, and how do we define and look at food security more broadly," said Defra's chief scientific adviser Professor Robert Watson.
How about scrapping all the lunatic regulations on farming, whether EU imposed or self-inflicted - I'm not expert on these, but the tagging system for lambs, the rule that you can't farm on land where the water supply is more than 50 mg/litre (about half of farmland in the South East of England, I am reliably informed) and the restrictions on GM crops spring to mind - and, er, otherwise leaving it to "the markets"?
Still here
6 hours ago
8 comments:
"The food supply was currently secure but population growth and climate change could have an impact, he warned..."
And I thought our birth rate was declining...?
JuliaM: "And I thought our birth rate was declining...?"
Sure, that's why they have to give all that lovely money to single mums and let all the immigrants in, different topic. Nothing to do with 'food security!
As I mentioned last month:
Seeing as she is turning a bit libertarian, perhaps she might begin arguing for the abolition of the CAP which enables the EU to impose tariffs on the import of produce from non-member states. Not only that, it artificially creates waste via internal subsidies, thereby leading to dumping of surplus on impoverished nations. Without the CAP, Fairtrade (which, in turn, hypes prices to EU residents), so beloved by Labour, quite possibly wouldn't be necessary, as Dizzy argued in February.
Funny how they forget about the CAP when it suits the climate change agenda, eh?
The BBC interview with Hilary Benn was preceded by a description of the report by one of the news anchors. During the preamble one of the things that caught my ear was the comment that our diets will need to change, reducing the amount of meat that we eat.
f***ing something up completely and then dreaming up more state intervention to f*** things up even more
Yes indeed but interesting that, like me, you're a little f***ing squeamish about printing the whole word. :)
One word: externalities.
do you really think there should be a free for all on GM crops?
thats one piece of EU legislation i am grateful for
Bruce, that's three words, actually.
Roym, yes I do.
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