By Paul Homewood

This week the newly Green Express has been trying to persuade us to stop eating meat:

It found that seven percent of us are vegetarian, three percent vegan with another four percent pescatarian – people who will eat fish but not other meat. Another nine percent class themselves as occasional vegetarians because they regularly choose not to eat meat.  Overall, three in four still see themselves  as carnivores but  26 percent are already reducing their meat consumption and another 36 percent are considering it – a total of 62 percent.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/1418538/green-britain-food-meat-environment-climate-change?utm_source=daily_express_newsletter&utm_campaign=express_green_britain&utm_medium=email&pure360.trackingid=80d0b269-9ee9-4516-b8e9-4e546eac2711

In reality the number of vegetarians and vegans is still tiny. Indeed it is less than the 12% which a poll three years ago, reported by the Guardian. 

But what will be the impact on British farming if the green vegan lobby gets its way?

According to DEFRA, dairy, livestock and poultry farming directly employs 166,000 people, and is worth $18bn to the economy, accounting for about two thirds of the total agricultural sector:

http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare

These are only direct jobs; many thousands of other indirect jobs rely on the farming sector.

As many have pointed out, it is not only meat eating which will suffer. Dairy farming will also have to be cut back to meet climate targets, so we will simply end up importing dairy products instead. Other products such as leather will also have to be replaced.

Many dairy and livestock farmers will be unable to transition to other types of food production, because of the nature of their land and climate. Remember too the uncounted value which farmers generate by their custodianship of the countryside. Eco loons would rather see the land return to the wild.

And what will we eat instead? As I pointed out a few weeks ago, most of the food eaten by vegetarians has to be flown into the country, making a nonsense of Net Zero targets.

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

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April 10, 2021 at 11:03AM