Food imports - email to our MP

E-mail to the local Weston-Super-Mare MP, John Penrose, sent on 15/05/2020:


Dear Mr Penrose

I rarely contact you, but following yesterdays Commons business in relation to the production and environmental standards of food that will be imported in the future, I am impelled to register my amazement and disappointment.  If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, surely it must be that obesity and type 2 diabetes are avoidable problems that impact the NHS and society more generally.  Logically, therefore, how can importing low standard cheap foodstuffs that often find their way into the highly processed diet of those most at risk to Covid-19 be defendable.  The lack of logic here is staggering.  This also seems to be a kick in the teeth for UK agriculture, who are obliged to produce food to high standards, and still compete in the world market, but now on a highly skewed playing field.  I understand from the press that the PM is taking up the issues of obesity and diabetes, so again where is the logic of allowing low standard food imports?  

My current lockdown reading is "Wilding" by Isabella Tree about the Knepp estate rewilding.  I can recommend this highly, as it is well written with excellent scientific support, and includes a fascinating description of living with a bad press!  The relevance of this is in the economics of agribusiness and its impacts on our own landscapes.  For many, the coronavirus lockdown has reportedly had a large and positive impact on reducing household food wastage.  In rural areas, it has also encouraged contact with local food producers.  I would have hoped that the benefits of local food purchasing, reduced food miles and continuing high standard production would be things that would be encouraged post-coronavirus.  However, this will be threatened by cheap food imports.  I will not go into the adverse impacts of industrialised, low standard food production on ecology and sustainability, but the UK should NOT be condoning such methods by importing the fruits of such damaging practices.
Yours sincerely

Jon Marshall

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Don’t be a colonial tourist, or why we should review our travel expectations

Image
Have you noticed the heavy advertising for travel and tourism?   It seems to be in every medium. just as lockdown is easing.   Have you ever thought: Why do we expect to travel the globe and be tourists everywhere?   What is this sense of entitlement?   What does travel do to climate, to local communities, wildlife etc.?   What should we be doing? Fairly recently, I heard the following: “Everybody has the right to travel to wherever they wish”.   Pre-coronavirus, that was probably a very widely held opinion.   However, at the very simplest level, this is patently now not the case.   I am not able to visit my grandchildren in Scotland.   If we were to follow our inclination to go where we like, when we like, in fairly short order we would likely be subject to state intervention and sanctions – and in my opinion, under current coronavirus conditions, rightly too, including Mr Cummings.   So, how does this sit with our apparently insatiab...
Read more

Agricultural machinery is now too big for rural roads

Image
We have a problem that is specific to life in the countryside – ever larger tractors and associated machinery on country lanes.  I appreciate that living in the country brings privileges, especially under Covid-19 lockdown, when we have been able to walk out of our garden and not meet many, if any, people.   However, when we, our dogs, the verges and roadside walls are threatened by high speed tractors and trailers weighing tons, there is a time to speak out.   Our lane was built for traffic that consisted of a horse and cart and many rural roads across the UK are just the same.   The mechanisation revolution in agriculture that started around the Second World War still continues.   With ever fewer people working on farms, the technological answer has been to develop larger and larger and ever more powerful machinery.   The larger the tractor, the less time it takes to work a field.   This brings time efficiency, but at what cost?   More and mor...
Read more

Ecosystem services – a bit of a mess

Image
Ecosystem function, ecosystem processes, ecosystem services, final ecosystem services, ecosystem goods, natural capital and biodiversity – all these terms are currently very popular in ecological and related circles, reflecting the improved links between science and policy.   These are important, as society considers its options for increased food production, the threats of climate change and the needs of species, habitat and landscape conservation.   A recent paper by Mace, Norris and Fitter (TREE, January 2012; http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534711002424 , for those with academic access) gives a comprehensive review of the relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem services. Reading this paper and a series of in-depth research proposals on the subject over recent weeks confirms my suspicions that the area is complex and conceptually messy.   As scientists, we need to have our concepts sorted, preferably elegantly, before we can make headway ...
Read more