The Government's food policy for the next 20 years is intended to not only promote healthy food but also to fight global warming and ensure we do not fall victim to food shortages.Oh, wow! A food policy that does all that…?
Consumers are encouraged to eat less red meat and dairy, to reduce the amount of methane produced by cows, and more locally-sourced seasonal fruit and vegetables to cut down on food being transported over long distances.How? Exactly how are they to be ‘encouraged’?
New labels on food will show the 'carbon footprint' in manufacturing and transporting products.Oh. In other words, a few ecoloonies will block up the aisles scrutinising the small print so they can be holier than thou when they throw their tedious mung-bean dinner parties, and for everyone else, it’ll be business as usual…
Is that it? Oh, no. Labour aren’t going to be satisfied until we’re all living the life of a Panamanian peasant farmer:
When meals are finished all households will be expected to use a "slop bucket" in the kitchen to ensure food is composted rather than sent to landfill.In the middle of summer, that’s going to be pleasant come refuse-day, isn’t it? I think I’ll buy shares in Rentokil…
Or perhaps we’ll simply put left-over food waste in the liquidiser and dispose of it down the loo. What do you think is more likely?
Cookery lessons in schools and community centres will teach children and adults how to reuse left overs in a reminder of wartime austerity.Eh…?
You’re currently ‘teaching them’ to read and write and avoid sexually harassing, bullying and stabbing each other, aren’t you? Tell me, how’s that working out?
Yeah, that’s what I thought…
Manufacturers will be expected to reduce plastic packaging and "buy one get one free" will be phased out for products that can go off.In the middle of a recession, with people facing a triple-whammy of low wages, rising prices and a huge public sector to maintain, you want to make it harder for them to feed their families..?
The use of "best before" dates and "sell by" dates will also be sidelined to stop people throwing away edible food in favour of a "use by" label that refers to when food is no longer safe to eat.Anyone who cares about thrift is already doing this; it’s why we have noses and eyes and taste buds.
Anyone who doesn’t care won’t care any more in the future…
Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, who is due to announce the new strategy at the Oxford Farming Conference, said the UK could be a "food superpower" in the next ten years by revolutionising farming and food manufacturing.A ‘food superpower’?
But ultimately, the vegetarian minister said healthy eating is up to the consumer and pledged more money to educate people in eating and buying the right food.
The country currently treated with contempt by superpowers and suffering the humiliation of having their ships seized on the high seas and their tourists abducted by a bunch of qat-chewing goat-herders?
How low has Blair and now Brown brought us that being a ‘food superpower’ is something to be aspired to..?
Angry Exile has more on this, and sums it up perfectly in one sentence:
Oh, my. Health nazism, delusional green control freakery and a touch of neo-Malthusianism, all in one sentence.Indeed! You know what it's not, though?
It's not a vote winner.
15 comments:
Three primary objectives of all governments, secure borders, secure food supply, and secure energy supply, this bunch fail on all. Who decided that a veggie was ideal to be put in charge of agriculture?
Manufacturers will be expected to reduce plastic packaging and "buy one get one free" will be phased out for products that can go off.
Interestingly I was watching TV news item on Monday and the presenter was talking to a government adviser about BOGOF offers. They had bought a load of shopping from supermarkets (in fact every BOGOF in store and had laid out all the "healthy" foods on one row of tables and the "unhealthy" ones on a second). The unhealthy shop took up at least twice as much table area as the healthy, suggesting that supermarkets were promoting unhealthy food more than healthy food.
I got the impression that the narrative was that shops should encourage more healthy eating, presumably through more BOGOF offers on healthy food. Now, there's a problem here because most of the healthy food was fresh, perishable goods.
Here's a story about food waste:
Most supermarket shoppers are canny consumers and do not buy food that they know will end up perishing in the fridge or fruit bowl. Food waste may have only hit the Government's agenda in recent months; it has been on the shopping list of worries for most households for far longer.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the one place where supermarkets use bogofs sparingly is in the meat and veg aisles.
In other words the government is passing a law to enforce what sensible people would do anyway.
Malthebof, they put a veggie in charge of food and agriculture, a Muslim in charge of equality and an idiot in charge of education.
Anybody who is competent is on the backbenches out of harm's way.
So we up the veggie consumption, introduce GM crops and cull our animal husbandry to reduce methane. Meanwhile the methane produced from all this rabbit food is transferred to being produced by human beings. Now, which species is the most polluting creature on the planet already? Labour, what a joke.
Better stock up on the canned goods now, before it's too late. With all that added sugar and salt they aren't healthy, of course, but they are a damned sight more healthy than starvation, which is what Labour clearly have planned for us.
"It's not a vote winner"
Probably true - but, apparently, it's not a vote loser either. Labour can depend on its clients - benefits claimants, public sector workers, academia, the "new British"- to support them. This nonsense, together with Harman's equality drivel and Balls' "education" crapola will not actually lose Labour one further vote.
Yes, it's rubbish but neither of the other two main parties have their hearts in really opposing any of it. After all, both Conservatives and LibDems have bet their respective farms on exactly the same agenda: differently expressed maybe, slightly less loonie round the edges but, in effect, the same policies.
Food labelling is an EU competence so there's damn all our local administration at Westminster can do about it anway.
(The Daily Telegraph are jumping on this same bandwagon at present, also apparently in denial about how these things actually work).
And why does the State need a food strategy anyway? If prices rise and supplies get tight do they not think the farming industry will get the message? Or are they still so wedded to central planning despite now having almost a century of evidence that it doesn't produce anything expect widespread poverty, misery, and death?
Put food waste in the liquidiser and flush it down the loo? Good God, woman, buy an in-sink garbage disposal unit. It will cost you a couple of hundred quid, tops, less if you fit it yourself.
Actually if the green loons ever do foist their mediaeval 'slop buckets' on people, I predict a boom in the sale of such handy gadgets.
Food waste in my kitchen goes to the pigs, waste from the pigs goes on the midden, waste from the midden goes to the veg growing patch, veg comes to my kitchen, waste from my kitchen goes to the pigs,,,,,,,,,,
simple but made illegal by this government, sod them I eat 2/3 pigs a year myself, 3/4 sheep, and at least an ox.
That is what I grow myself.
...encouraged to eat less red meat and dairy...
Oh yeah, I'll just stop eating cheeseburgers to save Mother Earth. My god, these people are fucked in their empty heads.
And I'm not keeping no damn vegetable waste in my god damned kitchen either. Damn.
"...this bunch fail on all."
I can't think of anything they don't fail at yet...
"Now, there's a problem here because most of the healthy food was fresh, perishable goods."
The sort of things that people used to cook with, back when people cooked.
"Better stock up on the canned goods now, before it's too late. With all that added sugar and salt they aren't healthy, of course..."
Ah, well, about that...
"...apparently, it's not a vote loser either. Labour can depend on its clients - benefits claimants, public sector workers, academia, the "new British"- to support them."
Indeed!
"And why does the State need a food strategy anyway? If prices rise and supplies get tight do they not think the farming industry will get the message?"
Can't leave it up to the market! People might wonder why we need 600+ 'representatives' if things run so well without them...
"Put food waste in the liquidiser and flush it down the loo? Good God, woman, buy an in-sink garbage disposal unit."
Thay've never really taken off here. Oh, you can get them, but they aren't as ubiquitous as thay are in, say, the States.
Maybe this will change that, as you suggest.
"My god, these people are fucked in their empty heads."
They certainly are.
Hilary also revealed that food production in the UK was 'over bureaucratic'. So whose fault is that Hilary?
Can't see the elfinsafety being too impressed with schools using leftovers either.
We have a garbage grinder, too.
All mashable coooked food waste goes in it, so do chicken bones and other semi-hard stuff.
Uncooked waste goes where it should go, in the compost bin.
Only really intractable stuff like chop bones goes in the dustbin, consequently no smell, no mess, very little wet waste at all.
Possibly a few more rats, but hey they are there anyway whether you notice them or not. The cat and the terriers seem to keep control in that area.
The only problem is that putting veggie waste down the drain increases bod at the sewage plant. It's not a worry if only a couple out of 200 houses have these machines - as in our village - but if most people had one, they'd need to up their aeration rates quite a lot down the hill there.
That will be the Righteous' excuse for banning garbage grinders, you just wait and see.
Reasonably on topic (for a change)
I was in Sainsbury's about four days before Christmas perusing the frozen turkeys when I became aware of some mad old bint hanging around the joint with what I took to be her grandson.
"Come and have a look at the dead animals Michael" she screeched at the poor lad. I could see that she'd clocked my presence and was putting on a performance. "That's what Christmas is all about, killing animals" (all with due swivel-eyed glares in my general direction).
I limited myself to holding up a particularly hefty specimen to the light and making appreciative murmurs as to its Dickensian magnificence.
What would you have done? :-)
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