It’s the smell I remember. The stench permeated everything in the hotel: the lobby, the bedrooms and the bar.
I was in California visiting a tomato farm, making a TV programme, Global Harvest, for the BBC about food production, and staying in this lovely, genteel old hotel – which reeked.
On the last day I discovered why. Crossing the highway heading to the airport, I caught sight of a vast ‘feedlot’ compound – tens of thousands of cattle penned together without a blade of grass to stand on or to eat.
It’s the smell I remember. The stench permeated everything in the hotel: the lobby, the bedrooms and the bar, JIMMY DOHERTY writes
You know this kind of farming exists but you have to see it – and smell it – to believe it.
I’m writing this at my family home in Suffolk. Through my window, I can see one of my bulls, Lucky, a five-year-old Riggit Galloway in a field.
He is living up to his name with three British White cows, who are all enjoying his attention.
They’re part of my 60-strong beef herd, which, when sent to the slaughterhouse, go with a passport enabling the consumer to trace them right back to me.
This is not about sentimentality. It is about accountability. And that is what we are going to throw away if we let big American producers export their beef to Britain without ensuring that it meets the same field-to-fork standards as those upheld by our own farmers.
We currently have one of the safest food systems in the world, yet we are in danger of giving it up.
If the US gets its way in trade talks, Britain will be importing chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-pumped beef, pork from pigs fed growth-promoters, and grain treated with a plethora of pesticides and insecticides that are banned in the UK.
This makes a mockery of everything British farmers have been trying to do for the past 20 years and will cost us yet more of our food sovereignty.
We will be dependent on another country for, literally, our daily bread.
The idea of Brexit was to leave the EU and, in agricultural terms, to escape the Common Agricultural Policy.
We are going to throw away accountability if we let big American producers export their beef to Britain without ensuring that it meets the same field-to-fork standards as those upheld by our own farmers
Well, just wait until we sign a deal with the United States and find ourselves being told what to do by a country where food standards are dictated by the economy rather than the twin principles of public health and animal welfare.
American mass farming is different from ours. Industry leaders produce food the way Henry Ford made cars or Coca-Cola makes Coke. They offer more, cheaper, and faster.
If this meat and grain comes to Britain unchecked, our farmers will have two options: lower their standards in an attempt to compete, or go bust because they won’t.
This will destroy farms that have existed for generations – and farming is not the kind of industry you can turn on and off. Once that deal is signed, there will be no going back.
British farms are the beating heart of our local communities. Yes, they’re mechanised and they care about productivity.
Yes, jobs and income matter, but they are also a cornerstone of our civilisation because they feed us. It’s that basic.
During times of strife, whether it was the Second World War or now the Covid-19 pandemic, farmers are on the front line, feeding the nation.
They are key workers, like the NHS or the military. We must respect and protect them.
It’s easy to say British consumers will have a choice at the supermarket checkout. But they won’t.
If the US gets its way in trade talks, Britain will be importing chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-pumped beef, pork from pigs fed growth-promoters, and grain treated with a plethora of pesticides and insecticides that are banned in the UK
That hotel in California I visited had a classy butchery and I popped in, out of professional curiosity.
The steaks looked tremendous. It was only when I saw the feedlot they had come from that I realised their impressive size was undoubtedly the result of intensive rearing methods and growth hormones.
Now imagine a harried shopper, reaching for a twin pack of steaks in a British supermarket.
Two identical packets lie side by side, but one is half the price of the other.
The label probably won’t tell you why – you’ll be basically shopping blind, because a deal which favours America will, I fear, ultimately end detailed labelling.
The consequences won’t just be economic.
I recall another foreign trip, to Mexico, where I visited a dental hospital and saw a three-year-old boy having all his teeth taken out.
They’d been rotted by the cheap food full of high-fructose corn syrup which had flooded into the country from the United States.
The Hispanic diet was once one of the healthiest in the world. Then came a three-way trade deal between Mexico, Canada and the US which practically ruined Mexican agriculture overnight.
Plus the number of leg amputations for an uncontrollable diabetes problem went through the roof.
So I predict a UK-US trade deal would lead to an even bigger obesity crisis in this country, fuelled by food high in hidden fat, salt and sugar, with a knock-on effect on the NHS.
When post-war rationing finally came to an end in Britain, we wanted lots of food, quickly. We became a more urban society. The supermarket was created.
The idea of Brexit was to leave the EU and, in agricultural terms, to escape the Common Agricultural Policy
We switched from being people who shopped in a high street butcher’s to people who bought meat wrapped in cellophane and neatly labelled.
There was a disconnect from farms and producers. But the past 20 years has seen a return to farmers’ markets and artisan producers and an understanding that a free-range chicken at £10 is different from a £4 bird.
Yet here, you can still be assured of the quality and safety of a £4 chicken. Were that situation to change, it would be the lower income households which would suffer the most.
There is also the rest of Europe to consider.
We still want to trade with EU countries, but if we lower our production standards of beef, lamb, pork and poultry so that our farmers have a level playing field with those in America, then the EU would reject our produce.
So we would open ourselves up to an American market which we’d struggle to get into, and close ourselves off from one we want to retain, in the EU.
And, let’s face it, the truth is that America doesn’t really want our food, not in massive quantities, although it’s happy to import British specialities such as cheddar cheese.
Anyone who sells traditional farmhouse cheddar to the United States has to abide by their laws which permit only a certain number of cheese mites – the little organisms which burrow into the cheese and are vital for its maturation – per square inch on the rind.
I have watched cheese producers literally vacuuming cheese mites off their cheddar because the American market has different demands to that of Britain. (Here, we know that you can’t have great cheddar without a bunch of cheese mites.)
In other words, we have to meet their standards. And in return, whatever trade deal is made, they should stick to ours.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-trade – and I’m certainly not anti-American trade.
I’ve met wonderful farmers in the US who are dedicated to quality produce, but there are systems in place there that simply wouldn’t match the way we do things here.
Our government has made promises and must keep them. It owes our farmers leadership and reassurance.
If those promises are broken, it would be no less than a betrayal of our family farms, our nation’s health and hard-won consumer trust in the ‘open book’ farming which means that what we see in the field is what we get on our plates.
It would be a tragedy to lose it.