Thread by @BestForBritain

Old MacDonald had a farm, ee-eye-ee-eye-oh.

And on that farm he had 80,000 hormone-injected cows.

A 🧵 on the dangers of a rushed trade deal with Australia. 👇 @pimlicat 1/
bestforbritain.org/a_rushed_trade…

The biggest cattle station in Aus is Anna Creek, constituting abt 5.8m acres of farmland. At its peak in 2012 there were 17K head on the ranch.

You call that a herd? The Alexandria farm in the Northern Territory is two-thirds of the size of Anna Creek, but home to 80K cattle. 2/

In fact, Australia has 8 of the 10 biggest farms on the planet.

For context, the average British farm is around 213 acres & even the bigger farms are on average just over 1K acres. 3/

The President of NFU Scotland @MartinKennedyVP says Aussie cattle are fed industrially and intensively, with the industry having a larger carbon hoofprint as a result – and that’s before meat is transported halfway around the world. 4/
bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla…

It’s little surprise British farmers are deeply anxious about the looming trade deal with Australia.

But it’s not just farmers who are concerned. Our polling shows 61% of people believe the welfare of farmers should take priority in a trade deal. 5/
bestforbritain.org/britishfarmers…

As well as the advantages of scale that Aussie farmers enjoy there are welfare issues, such as the length of time live animals can be in transit, & cruel practices such as mulesing – slashing the rear quarters of sheep without anaesthetic, to reduce blow fly infestations. 6/

Then there's injecting growth hormones into livestock. At present, Aussie beef represent 0.5% of the UK market & none contains hormones.

The danger from easing rules on an issue like this is that it opens the floodgates to other countries sending lower-standard meat to the UK 7/

The Trade Secretary is busy today demoing fresh sounds like ‘no bleached birds from the US’ & ‘I’ve been clear we’re not changing standards’. While we always applaud new material, sometimes you just want the classics. Play ‘No checks in the Irish sea’! 8/
itv.com/news/2021-06-1…

If we open the back door to second-rate food imports then it’s not the premium Waitrose cuts that'll be affected, it’s the grub in schools, hospitals and care homes where cost is often the primary concern and those doing the eating have no say. 9/

That’s the risk from a rushed Aussie trade deal – it’s the inevitable bleeding away of standards when we strike deals with other countries, and the ease with which ingredients that are, at present, illegal, can find their way legitimately and anonymously into our food chain. 10/

Crashing through a deal to engineer positive headlines, and get a Brexit ‘win’, simply stores problems up for the future, both in terms of trade negotiations and the standards that so many people have worked so hard to put in place and maintain.

Ee-eye-ee-eye-No. /ENDS