Friends Of The Earth links animal farming to climate change
“I’ve spoken with farmers and I don’t believe they want to be involved in intensive farming any more than we want it.
“But if UK farmers are being squeezed on price, then they’ll be forced to go down the intensive route.
“No one wants to eat a chicken that’s been alive for 40 days and lived in a cramped cage and so there needs to be a change throughout the system.”
Birmingham Friends Of The Earth are trying to encourage organisations like the NHS to consider where they source their meat from and whether it could be done in a way that would support animal-friendly farming.
“We would really like departments of the NHS and other organisations to think long and hard about where they get their meat from,” Mary said.
“Ideally, it would be great if they could use organic meat and buy better quality meat as this helps to keep the demand for intensively farmed meat right down.
“In our research we have found some schools that now have meat-free days and the money that they save from doing this goes to buying better quality meat for the meals in the canteen.”
Birmingham Friends of the Earth are calling on MPs to back a parliamentary motion EDM 845 which has a raft of measures that will make farming practices better.
They are calling for the Government to stop subsidising intensive livestock farming which they believe makes it an attractive and lucrative practice.
They also want the Government to review European Trade Policy which place greater priority on the environmental and social impacts of global trade.
They would ultimately like supermarkets to offer fairer deals to farmers so they don’t have to compete so much on price, as this only serves to feed into the intensive farming system.
“The whole system has to change for things to be different. This is about breaking the chain between soy growing and intensive farming and it must stop.
“We have moved away from simple subsistence farming and gone into industrial farming to the point where things have just gone too far. We need to bring back the balance in the way we go about things and we do want the animals to get a better deal as well. The ideal position for the UK would be if we were food secure and able to manufacture and grow our own food and meat.
“This is a global issue but there are regional resonances to it. I don’t want to leave the world in a worse state than when I entered it.”
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