We Can't Persuade The Buyers....

...so we'll go to the source:

Healthier ready-to-eat meals could cut EU emissions by 48m tonnes annually and save customers €2.8bn (£2.4bn) each year, as well as reducing disease, a report has found. Fast food and ready meals provide more than a sixth of the EU’s calories but contain far more salt and meat than doctors recommend, according to an analysis from the consultancy Systemiq commissioned by environmental nonprofit organisations Fern and Madre Brava.

So much for the labelling systems - given a choice, customers buy what they like, not what government says they should buy. Are you listening, electric car manufacturers? 

“Making ready meals healthier and more sustainable is a no-regrets policy,” said Eduardo Montero Mansilla from the Spanish Consumers and Users’ Federation, one of 10 non-governmental organisations that co-authored the report. “We can improve the health of people and the planet at affordable prices.”

The report explored the effects of making big food companies comply with diets from the World Health Organization, which aims to avoid malnutrition and non-communicable disease, and the EAT-Lancet Commission, which tries to reduce environmental as well as human harm. In both cases, they found that ready-to-eat meals would need to contain about half as many refined grains and two-thirds less meat, on average, as well as “significantly” more legumes.

So at least this will have one good effect if it's ever implimented - people will go back to cooking for themselves, so they can have food with meat and flavour.  

“We are currently living in a diet-related health crisis,” said Alba Gil from the European Public Health Alliance, which co-authored the report. “Our dietary habits shape our health, and therefore our future. It makes only sense that policymakers regulate the environments where we consume food to make it healthy and affordable by design.”

It only makes sense to people with a powerful urge to make others conform by crushing their free will. I thought we had a name for people like that?  

The NGOs called on the EU to require big food companies to comply with health and sustainability guidelines for ready-made meals sold in the EU. The report did not analyse how consumers would respond to such a proposal.

Because it already knows. It can see how they react in other markets!  

Priorities...

All Britain's 11million cats would have to be microchipped under Government plans.

The modern Tory Party will safeguard your pussy, citizen! Whether you like it or not...

Now, don't get me wrong, I have three indoor-only cats and one occasionally-outdoor cat, and they are all chipped. Because why not? It provides peace of mind.

But to enforce it on everyone? Madness! Nor is it the only whacky bunny-hugger idea: 

The plan is one of a range of animal welfare measures to be put forward at the Conservative Party conference today.

A ban on keeping monkeys as pets and stopping live exports of farm animals for slaughter are also on the cards.

Hunters will be banned from importing endangered animals shot overseas – a measure promoted by Boris Johnson's girlfriend, Carrie Symonds.

See, the modern Tory Party will even safeguard dead animals! How about that!

David Bowles of the RSPCA said mandatory microchipping was a positive step, even if enforcement could be difficult.

Horses should be all microchipped and tattooed - why not start with them, before moving on to cats. Is it because you know damned well where all the unchipped ones are?

But you'll be turning up mob-handed at 89 year old Mrs Smith's door to make sure her little tabby complies with government regulations, I'll bet...

At this stage, as DumbJon nevers tires of pointing out, just what makes this Conservative Party in any way, shape or form conservative..?

They Aren't Getting A Chance To Say 'No', Are They?

Old Spitalfields Market, in east London, has asked traders not to sell fur products from the start of 2018.

A statement, posted on the market's Facebook page, read: “Following a review carried out by the Market, we have taken the decision to request stall holders do not offer animal fur for sale from the beginning of next year.”

So is it a ban, or a request? What if the stall holders refuse?

Director of Corporate Projects at animal rights group PETA Yvonne Taylor said: “The British public is saying no to fur – and Old Spitalfields Market has listened.

“Today's consumers want cruelty-free fashion – and PETA urges those markets still peddling real fur of any era to follow in Old Spitalfields Market's footsteps so that they, too, can become shopping destinations fit for Britain in 2018.”

They aren't getting the chance to say 'No', you ghastly harridan - some animal rights nutter is trying to say it for them. Stall holders wouldn't sell it if there was no market.

And you can have my fox & mink jackets when you pry them from my cold, dead fingers.