Sainsburys and Waitrose Buy British

Two supermarkets, Sainsburys and Waitrose have announced that from now on their own label dairy products will be sourced from British Farmers.

Now while this is good news for British farmers, the question is why on earth did they stop buying from British farmers in the first place. Now the obvious answer is that there was a greater profit margin. But as neither of these businesses were loss making, both are guilty of exploiting their strong market position and treating the farms that supply them like slaves.

The supermarkets in general have been guilty of downward pressure on the growers and suppliers so that farmers were liable to go bust if they did not accept the prices the supermarkets were willing to pay. Further, if they spoke out about their supermarket pay masters they would loose the sales and their businesses.

This means that the largest retailers are guilty of destroying large parts of the farming industry, as well as enforcing a lowering of welfare standards in agriculture.

None of the supermarkets are free of guilt here, they all do this as the senior staff are just far to focused on the profits and the bottom line. Based upon the mistaken assumption that there would always be supply and that prices could always be pushed down.

While the government has started to take notice of the problem of food security, the government have thus far just allowed the major retailers to call the shots. The problem of food security and the vast distances that food is transported effects all areas of policy. I have spoken many times about the health problems regarding food policy and the supermarkets. But the cheep food policy also has the effect of keeping the poor poor and the low nutritional standards of the highly processed food the poor can afford to buy prevents children learning too.

The fact that two supermarkets are now seeking praise for something they should have been doing anyway, is ridiculous. To me it is like an abusive husband trying to claim credit for no longer beating his wife. While I am pleased to hear that organisations that have been doing wrong are changing their ways, they (the supermarkets) have a long way to go before they can ask for the praise they seek.

Lower Welfare for Chickens

Because I was planning on heading out to watch and film the start of the bird migration, I was up early enough to hear Farming Today on the radio. This is a programme that I get as a podcast anyway so while I listening I was also busy making tea and my packed lunch, as well as dealing with a demanding cat. So I was not sure that I had hear correctly the question the presenter had asked.

The story being reported was that the Chicken Industry wants to increase the stocking density of broiler chickens in intensive systems and via Europe this looks likely to happen. This lead the presenter asking what is wrong with the farmer producing chicken at a price the consumer wants to pay?

Now people always want to pay less for everything, so if chickens were available at one pound (money) per bird there will be people that will buy them. As it is, I can still see chickens for sale at three pounds each or two for five pounds.

The problem is that these birds are produced with the lowest welfare standards as it is, so the proposal to lower welfare standards is just not credible. The lowering even further of poor standards just does not make any sense at all.

I know where this idea is coming from, the need to feed a growing population. Also the need to create the illusion that people are brought out of poverty. The problem is that these fast growing hybrid birds that are the mainstay of industrial chicken raising, put on this weight in the form of fat. While chicken from a pure breed bird is a lean meat, these hybrids are not the healthy meat that people think they are. Therefore all the food industry is doing is feeding more fat to the people and especially the poor.

The situation is that governments are treating the symptoms and not the real problems. I can understand that these solutions appear to be a simple fix for the uninformed politician, but with the problems of obesity and poor health allowing lower welfare standards will exacerbate these problems. Also while we have a problem with H1N1 (Swine flu) bubbling away in the population, it is within these intensive animal husbandry systems that influenza breeds and mutates.

While from the start of the swine flu outbreak I tried to suggest that we need to remain calm, I also said that the real risk was this H1N1 mutating and combining with the more dangerous H5N1 Bird flu. All the politicians are doing is creating greater problems further down the line.

All I ask is when will we learn.