The Countryside Alliance is urging farmers to lobby their MPs, demanding that the government protect rural businesses targeted by what it has called “malicious communications and fake reviews”.
The call comes as the Online Safety Bill is currently making its way through the House of Lords.
The proposed bill includes a section on ‘false communications’, which makes it an offence to post false messages intending to cause non-trivial psychological or physical harm – but the Countryside Alliance wants this stretched to cover financial and reputational damage.
The organisation has said that in recent years, rural businesses have been targeted by “activist extremists” who, when they don’t agree with a business’ pursuits, post “fake reviews” online that can be “devastating to the reputation of a business as well as to the mental health of the people who run it”.
It said that in 2018, Suffolk farmer Jonny Crickmore had to block “hundreds of vegans” who left abusive messages and reviews, including death threats directed at the family owned farm.
“These fake reviews can be devastating to the reputation of a business as well as to the mental health of the people who run it,” it said.
“Although any business can be affected, rural businesses have been targeted for particularly virulent attacks and we want to stop them being targeted in this way.”
Polly Portwin, a spokeswoman for the Countryside Alliance said: “In order to get the government to accept the Countryside Alliance amendments it is very important that ministers understand the justified concerns so many farmers have about such ideologically motivated campaigns against businesses and accepts the amendments.
To assist farmers in lobbying MPs the Countryside Alliance has launched an online e-lobby tool to make it easier for farmers to do so.
“We’ve made this easy with our online e-lobby tool, it takes seconds to make your views known,” Portwin added.
