With over 30 years’ experience in hospitality, food and drink at The Langton Arms, a successful butchery in the form of Rawston Farm Butchery and having hailed from a fifth-generation farming family, I’ve been invited to talk about the Australian trade deal, and what it means to the UK farming community.

We did a casual survey, and when asked, even fellow farmers did not know the ins and outs of the Australian trade deal our government are not-so-quietly making on our behalf as a nation. In fact, when you investigate more closely, there really is not a lot of information available in the public domain, which raises eyebrows, considering the implicit effect it will unarguably have on our UK based farmers, growers and producers.

In an article featured over at BBC online, Liz Truss, Trade Secretary tells MP’s “I am always looking to make sure British farmers will not be undercut by unfair practices from elsewhere,”. However, the UK are known to have among the highest standards in hygiene and animal welfare. As Tanya Steele, Chief Executive of WWF-UK critically states, “A rushed trade deal with Australia could drive a coach and horses through those efforts and provide a gateway into the UK for foods produced in ways that harm the environment.”*

British farmers have such high welfare farming standards compared to anywhere else in the world. We’ve seen countless examples of how cheap imported meat is making its way into our food chain almost under the radar.

Australian beef, for example, is produced intensively and more cheaply than can be done in UK. In this deal, Australia’s top beef exporter expects to increase sales to the UK tenfold, so clearly it is impossible that our high standards will not be compromised, and once again the consumer will be able to be easily mislead about what they are eating. Already, mislabelling on cheap meat imports to the UK is a huge problem, with this meat being permitted to use the supposedly trusted Red Tractor label, which suggests it has been reared here in the UK.

We’ve seen cheap pork being imported, which has been made into sausages and labelled with the British flag. Is this ethical? No. The consumer is led to believe they are buying British produce being raised under the high standards we can trust, but this potential loophole means those who do not know what to look for, are eating meat that has not been raised to such high standards, or in fact, mislabelled meat, which could be something entirely different to what they think they are eating.

Only back in Easter 2021, New Zealand lamb was being wrapped with the British flag, and when we did a price check British lamb was in fact cheaper than New Zealand lamb. So, the value was not even in benefitting from a lower price – why are we letting this happen?

Love Local Trust Local was founded to help raise awareness and educate the public on how food labelling really works, and help the consumer know who to trust. With these sorts of trade agreements, this is providing plenty of space to truly muddy the waters and make this a far greater challenge.

As a country, it is terrifying to think that we only have around 6 months of food before we run out completely. Importing is not the answer – ramping up our UK farmers output is a more sustainable approach. If Covid has taught us anything, surely, it is that we need to value our local produce far more. Over the last year and a half we have seen a huge increase on reliance on local farm shops, butcheries, and the like at the time where the consumer almost had no choice.

As we saw first-hand, heading into the big supermarkets to pick up your internationally mislabelled produce, was not as reliable as the public would have been led to believe. This was because international travel was halted, and borders put firmly in place to contain the virus. How would this have played out, had there been no UK-reared produce to buy?

Whilst people will always want to buy cheaper produce, which is a real need for some people when considering budgeting, it is important to understand that if we all do our bit to shop locally, those prices for outstanding local produce will be able to come down making it more accessible for all.

In contrast, if we continue to buy en masse from countries with shoddy standards, this challenge will always be insurmountable. In essence, if we do not support our British farmers, there will be no local produce. This trade agreement means that hundreds of British farmers are destined to have their livelihood cut or destroyed, especially the smaller farmers, as they simply cannot compete.

With the Australian trade deal looming, and the potential US trade deal in our sights, meat traceability will become impossible, and that is something that the UK has been extremely thorough about, to protect our high standards.

Rawston Farm Butchery was established in 2012, at the time when the horse meat scandal was underway; horse meat was being wrapped in beef to disguise it, because it was full of painkillers, and this contaminated meat was therefore allowed to be filtered into our food chain here in the UK. These are the kinds of issues we can expect to see increase and take hold with these trade agreements coming into play.

As a farmer’s daughter and a farmer’s wife, I cannot emphasise enough, that the British farmers need to be protected from the abuse of the food industry. Farmers are busy people and are essential to our very existence. Farmers do not have time for confrontation – they are passionate about looking after their animals and growing their crops, and their time is fully occupied with just that. This is why Love Local Trust Local exists – to truly fly the flag for our local farmers, growers and producers, and help protect their livelihoods, which in turn, protects our society as a whole.

To coin a bumper sticker phrase, you will have likely seen; “No Farmers, No Food, No Future.” Sadly, never has a truer phrase been stated. People are always going to want cheap food I understand that. But I’d like to feel they want the British farmer to survive as well, given how integral this is to our very being.

To learn more about food labelling, to support local, and to get behind our farmers, growers and producers, head over to Love Local Trust Local.

Barbara Cossins, Founder of Love Local Trust Local, The Langton Arms & Rawston Farm Butchery

• UK-Australia trade deal: What are the arguments for and against? – BBC News

Last month we had the dreaded news that our herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle had gone down with Bovine Tuberculosis. This was the first time that any of our cattle had contracted the disease in the ten years that they have been grazing the Beaminster Downs.

The positive reactor, which was discovered through our annual herd test has large ramifications; infected cattle are to be slaughtered and we are now unable to move any cattle off our farm till they all test negative twice after 60 and 120 days.

Due to the high cases of the disease in Dorset, we have to test our cattle yearly for signs of the disease, as opposed to every four years in low-risk areas. Otherwise, we would only test the animals that are due to move off the farm within the next 60 days.

Once a risk to human health in the UK, Tuberculosis today, however, causes stress and emotional heartache as farmers have their livelihoods slaughtered due to the disease.

TB testing in cattle began in England in 1935, as milk drunk from an infected dairy cow would transmit the disease. As with today, infected cattle would be slaughtered to stop the spread of the disease, which nearly led to the disease’s eradication in the 1970s.

Unfortunately, however, it was soon discovered that badgers and deer were carrying and continuing to spread the disease across the country. Last year, in England alone, over 27,000 cattle were slaughtered due to the disease.

The solution?

Realistically, there isn’t one solution. And it’s a bit of a hot topic to bring up! The Government have had a three-pronged approach to be TB free by 2038; testing, culling and vaccinations.

Many areas across England have been actively culling the badger population and it was announced in February that this was to be continued in Dorset, Somerset and Devon.

DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) has set a five-year plan to have an effective vaccine for cattle. Currently, there is one, however, it has an effectiveness of around 60% and when tested a vaccinated cow will automatically test positive for the disease.

Badgers can be vaccinated, but only by injections, so they must be caught in a cage and treated. This makes the process extremely costly; a five-year vaccination programme for badgers in Pembrokeshire worked out at £684 per badger.

Last year saw a 10% reduction in Bovine Tuberculosis slaughters in England – but it’s not enough. All of our cattle are to have blood tests in the next month to definitively see the toll of how many more will be killed.

Any animals that are slaughtered are compensated for by the Government, but the real cost is the mental effect on the farmer.

Despite what many people may think, we love our animals. We breed them, raise them and spend every day of our lives with them. We give up family time to spend time in the pouring rain with the boys and girls out in the fields.

it’s a case of having one of your own slaughtered, and farmers will do anything to stop that.

By: Andrew Livingston

I think after last months article where I mentioned  that during the month of April, we had not received any measurable rainfall and that perhaps farmers and growers could do with some rain, during May we have virtually have had rain everyday.  So far the totals amount to 150mm or 6 inches.  This has led to the rapid growth of our grass and crops which has meant that the silage making process of providing winter feed for cattle has been severely delayed.  At least when the weather does improve we shall have a good crop although may be lacking in quality.

Much of the farming politics has been involved with the trade talks with Australia.  The result of the Brexit Deal has led to the United Kingdom being able to negotiate trade deals with countries outside the EU.  The trade deal being agreed with Australia may be a bad deal for the farmers.  With a tariff free deal being on the table this could mean food being imported produced at lower standards to what is expected in this country.  This would put the UK producer at a disadvantage and unable to compete on price.

Let’s hope there will be better labelling in place soon so that consumers have accurate information of how and where the food was produced and hopefully will support local producers where possible.

With the weather now improving we have been able to get on with our silage making providing feed for our cattle next winter . Always an exciting time of year bringing in the first harvest of grass especially when you are relying on various bits of machinery not to break down !

The photos are of silage making at Rawston in the 1960,s and this year.

By: James Cossins