Australian Beef - A huge threat to U.K. farmers

Katie59

GrannyGravy13

Have you got a link to UK farmers shooting male calves in front of their mothers please Kali2 ?

Male calves now have to be reared until they can be sold, whatever the cost, wether it is economic or not. Its one of the conditions in the milk supply contracts, there are lots of other health and welfare rules that have to be followed.

Farmers have until the end of the year to comply with the new welfare rules. One of the problems is that not enough people are eating rose veal so farmers don’t want or can’t afford the cost of keeping them and were killing them soon after birth as a consequence. Not sure they were shot in front of their mothers.

The new welfare rules should improve the situation as should the use of sexed semen where AI is used. It costs a bit more but it means the semen will mostly only produce female calves. The wonders of modern science eh!

Mawbe, He doesn't give a name, or even a number, Just standard beef cattle photograph and the farmer and farm.

City dwellers do not have to buy from supermarkets, there are a lot of farmshops and producers who do mail order.

25 years ago, the last time I lived in a town, I found a butcher in one of the neighbourhood precincts that litter most towns and bought my meat from him. In fact I have not bought meat in a supermarket, more than very occasionally, since I bought my first freezer in 1973, about the time DD was born.

I will not buy it when it appears on the shelves. I prefer organic grass fed meat, more expensive but I would rather have less of it than buy more cheap meat that has been raised as part of mass production and fattened up with grain, not for me. British farmers all the way I have a sticker on my car too, supporting our farmers. We have the best standards in the UK let’s keep it that way.

M0nica

Our butcher in France (I have vague memories that we have a house there) only sells local meat. He will have a photo of the animal currently being sold in a shop and the name of the farmer and farm name where it was reared.

I'll never forget going to a friend's for lunch and Thelma and Louise were on the table in a lovely sauce. DD ate the vegetables and pasta.

Plenty in the Dales as well

Yes, I was very surprised that you didn't see the animals in the fields when you went walking in the Dales recently, Kali2.

Perhaps Gannygangan, being in the location, knows more. I did wonder if some animals were still snug and warm in their winter barns and lambing sheds because the weather has been so unseasonably cold with snow and lashing rain.

Monica I respect your decisions regarding the food you eat but, let's face it, the majority of people with families to feed on limited budgets are not able to indulge those choices. They have neither the money nor the time or even the means to get to a farm shop.

They still have to eat.

Callistemon, you do not need to go to a farm shop, you buy it online and it is delivered. Just like ordering an online delivery from any supermarket.

I have also said many many times, several on this thread. You buy better, but do not pay more because you eat less.

What drove me away from supermarkets was when I bought a pound of minced beef, not the cheapest, to make bolognaise sauce for 4, between the excess fat and excess water, I ended up with a sauce that would barely feed 3. Now I buy a pound of environementally friendly, high animal welfare good quality mince, I add extra vegetables, and, usually a tin of lentils and end up with a rich meaty sauce sufficient to feed 8 people.

I dont disagree, M0nica but I'm not your audience.
It's people who can scarcely afford to feed their families you need to address. There have in fact been a few TV programmes about this but I'm not sure it makes much difference.
I'm not sure what would be the best way to get people to buy organic, sustainably grown food when they have a very limited income, children to feed and perhaps not even a computer to be able to order online.

Perhaps contacting the Trussell Trust to suggest ways forward?

There will always be a certain proportion of people who struggle for every mouthful they put in their mouths and I obviously do not have those in mind, but this shouldn't blind ourselves to the majority who are not in that position.

Out walking today, every family I saw had a dog, and not a small dog either. If you can afford to keep a dog - and over 50% of households own a cat or dog, you can afford to buy decent meat - for yourself and your family.

Callistemon, you do not need to go to a farm shop, you buy it online and it is delivered. Just like ordering an online delivery from any supermarket.

The farm we used to go to very many years ago (just free range meat in the days when you went to the farm and packed your own to freeze) has now become a rather posh online retailer with prices to match.

I think you've got quite a task ahead of you, M0nica, persuading the great British public that £20 for one steak on a bed of lentils to share amongst 6+ is the way forward.

M0nica Tue 25-May-21 09:06:53
MawBe, He doesn't give a name, or even a number, Just standard beef cattle photograph and the farmer and farm

I know you didn’t! ???
Just joining in the spirit of the history of these contented cows
When we moved here 37 years ago I asked a local farmer’s wife friend for advice re local butchers as I was still running my catering business. She replied that obviously they ate their own beef but recommended a particular butchers who she knew were supplied by the same abattoir they sent their cattle to. I have stuck with them and now I am on my own I can buy exactly the quantities I need.
I agree about locally sourced food and quality over price. Sadly too many people in the U.K. do seem to want cheapness at all costs - so Dutch pork, New Zealand lamb (which I am not decrying but it is half the price of Welsh or English) , battery chicken, frozen turkeys over Norfolk Bronze, prepacked mince from goodness knows where, or indeed what part of the beast over local - culminating in the horse lasagne scare of a few years ago.

Oh yes, cows do graze in fields in the UK- I don't think I ever said otherwise. I am pro UK traditional farming 100%, hence my concerne about this Deal. Because this will indeed be the thin end of the wedge, a tiny proportion at first, then increasing in stages- until small farms go under (so many have already) - and we will have 2 choices, meat imported from the other side of the world, farmed in ways which would not be alloed here- or meat raised in modern farms where cows will never see the light of day. And for the very well off, a third choice, locally reared quality meat, for the very few.

And yes, well done the UK for rosy veal- but seeing cows with calves roaming freely is still not a common sight in most parts of UK.

A question for meat eaters - why not eat horse or dog meat? What’s the difference between that and cow or pig meat? Why would a horse lasagne be any different from a cow lasagne when it’s covered in garlic and sauce? And why does cow become beef when bits of it’s body is on a plate?

The animal name is the old English one eg Pig or Cow whilst the meat name is from the French so you have pork (porc) and beef (beef) as part of refinement. That was how it was explained to me at school many years ago. I think it may have started with the Normans.

I’ll never forget last year when they took the Aberdeen Angus calves from the cows and they called for them throughout the night. I do eat meat, and I feed my dog lots of it but I’m trying to eat less meat and more lentils.

(Boef)

Stop changing my text

A question for meat eaters - why not eat horse or dog meat
They do in other countries, eg France, China.
I was given horse meat in France but did not eat it as I found it unpalatable.

It's just not customary here.
People eat rabbit but I don't

Sadly too many people in the U.K. do seem to want cheapness at all costs - so Dutch pork, New Zealand lamb (which I am not decrying but it is half the price of Welsh or English) , battery chicken, frozen turkeys over Norfolk Bronze, prepacked mince from goodness knows where, or indeed what part of the beast over local - culminating in the horse lasagne scare of a few years ago.

I do think that many people, whilst not needing to go to a food bank, have a struggle to make ends meet.
I think many on Gransnet, living in leafy suburbs or expensive country villages, tend to forget that.

Although even the seemingly well-heeled around here still flock to Aldi and Lidl.

I do wonder if this is all a storm in a teacup. Politicians may make trade deals but Australian farmers may not be prepared to sell their beef at a loss when they can sell it at home for a higher price or have found more lucrative markets in the Far East.

On Coles's (Australian supermarket) website:
No-added hormone beef
All Coles Own Brand beef in the meat departments has been 100 per cent Australian sourced with no added hormones since 2011. By not adding hormones, the cattle grow and mature naturally.

Woolworths:

All Woolworths and Countdown branded fresh pork is gestation sow stall-free. ... Dairy, lamb, poultry, eggs, pigs, farmed finfish and shellfish species and Countdown beef must be reared without added hormonal growth promotants. In Australia we work to the national beef industry standards.


^

I have eaten horse in France, we were skiing and DH went into the bar and ordered steak baguettes and frites. When I went in to use the loo, I read the menu whilst queuing, I was cross with DH but I had already eaten and enjoyed my lunch!!!

I do eat local rose veal, I only eat free range chicken, eggs and locally raised meat along with some local game. No offal or rabbit.

When we eat out unless the menu shows origins of meat I opt for fish or vegetarian.

Sadly too many people in the U.K. do seem to want cheapness at all costs

I thought that was one of people's reasons for voting Leave?
Cheap food...

Apparently, from 2016 figures, the British spend on food as a %age of GDP is one of the lowest in the world.. If we get much cheaper we'll hit rock bottom.

Perhaps, instead of forcing poor people to eat cheap and questionable foodstuffs, we should be thinking of how to provide working people and people on UC with enough money to be able to buy food of a higher standard and not let the questionable stuff into the UK at all.

very amused at all the meat eaters virtue signalling on this thread

Callistemon that is for beef for consumers in Australia, but with all the animals the country has, the majority, presumabl,y go to export. Do these conditions apply to them as well?

As for the animals we eat, humans generally eat herbivores only. Dog, a carnivore, is eaten in China, but I think that originally was a reflection of the extreme poverty and famine conditions many of the Chinese lived in for centuries rather than by desire. It then became a delicacy.

Indeed it is strange how the extremes of food, eaten first by the poorest, become delicacies: shark's fin soup, mincemeat (originally the rotting entrails of an animal made edible by adding spices and fruit to it) caviar, haggis

During military sieges, including during WW2, people have been reduced to eating rats and cockroaches and shipwrecked sailors have been reduced to cannabilism, but I do not think anyone would use those circumstances to justify them as formng part of our diet. However I have no problem with horsemeat. A horse is a herbivore.

With so many foods, animal and vegetable to eat, it is not surprising that every society has its own group of foods it does or not eat.

In Britain, and much of northern Europe, the farm labourer and his pig, were an architype of rural life. In the heat of the Middle East, the avoidance of pork, essentially because of its disease transition capacity, is so deeply felt that it is entrenched in the rituals of both Islam and Judaism. In this country we did not eat fresh pork in the summer months for the same reasons.

Apparently, from 2016 figures, the British spend on food as a %age of GDP is one of the lowest in the world.. If we get much cheaper we'll hit rock bottom.

Yes, it is, I've posted that previously.

And Australian beef is not cheap

and not let the questionable stuff into the UK at all.

I do not believe it will be questionable.
No more than what came in someyptimes from the EU or our home-produced meat, but then the bar was set low in some cases.
I doubt Australian kangaroo will be passed off as beef, although they are herbivores too.

In Britain, and much of northern Europe, the farm labourer and his pig, were an architype of rural life
Apparently my Grandfather used to swap pigs with a nearby family as my Grandmother refused to eat their own pig.

Presumably, because she knew what it had been fed on