A coalition of 26 British farming, environmental and animal welfare organisations have written to all 650 MPs urging them to ensure the new Agriculture Bill includes safeguards to protect domestic standards in food imports.
The bill returns for its final Report stages today (May 13), before heading to the House of Lords. It will result in the biggest reform and transformation of British agriculture and food production since 1945.
The letter to MPs asks them to speak up for British food and farming in today’s House of Commons debate.
It states: “Today’s debate comes at a time when, due to Brexit, we are fundamentally reassessing our trading relationship with partners in the EU and across the world.
“It also coincides with one of the most serious crises the world has faced in a generation in the form of the coronavirus, and the ongoing challenges of climate change and biodiversity decline.
We are urging you to take this last opportunity to ensure that the bill secures vital safeguards for the high standards of food safety, animal welfare and environmental protection that the British public value so highly.
“The bill should ensure that agri-food imports are produced to at least equivalent environmental, animal welfare, and food safety standards as those required of producers in the UK.
“We are all agreed that a trade policy that undermines our farmers will mean a common goal of a more prosperous, sustainable and nature-friendly food and farming sector will be made much harder to achieve. And the UK will have missed an opportunity to set out its stall as being serious about tackling its global footprint.
“There are a number of amendments being brought forward which we believe the House should support. MPs must not miss this final opportunity.
“Amending the bill to enshrine the importance of food trade, but only where high standards of production are met, will allow the UK to be a standard-bearer for sustainable production and climate-friendly farming across the world.
“If UK farming is to face the future as a vital strategic sector, producing the food we eat and meeting the challenges of climate change, food security and the high expectations of the UK public in the way we treat our farmed animals and wildlife, the bill must not undermine that very goal by allowing in food imports that fail to meet its high ideals.”
Improving self-sufficiency
The UK is approximately only 58% self-sufficient in food – a figure Ulster Farmers’ Union president Ivor Ferguson said was keen for Government to increase.
Ferguson said: “The current pandemic has exposed just how vulnerable our ability to import food is and how the food chain could be severely affected if we were too heavily reliant on these goods coming into the UK.
“The UFU is constantly reiterating the need to support local food production and the less produce we need to import the better.
Our self-sufficiency will not rise dramatically overnight but with the correct policy in place it will improve over time benefiting our farmers, consumers, the economy and the environment as the food we produce would have a lower carbon footprint.
“With that said, the Government needs to act immediately and put legislation in place to ensure that any product imported into the UK, is produced to the same standards that our farmers adhere to here.
“The absence of this regulation has the potential to create an uncompetitive market, undermining our UK farmers and their ability to the feed the nation.
“Processors, retailers and the foodservice sector also need to be responsible in their sourcing policies. We need them to support UK produce and not to undermine our market. Consumers have recently been very clear in communicating this at retail level having made the distinction between local and imported food, which our farmers appreciate greatly.”
