The consumer isn't to blame, it's the greed of the retailers that force the suppliers prices down & entice them into cost cutting & economies of scale that inevitably cause issues.
2 mins left so here goes G lol: That's corporate miseducation to keep selling crap in bulk packages to insure either overeating or waste along with best before dates etc etc, while I think J Oliver is a div he has a point, maybe if we prioritised family and sustenance over material objects we could afford more expensive food. Make a pot of veg soup that lasts 3 days rather than two tins of veg soup that covers 2 individual portions....? It's not remotely hard to cook on the cheap and that's despite the hypermarkets being dominant. Change what we buy, they change how they supply it. No sympathy remotely needed or asked for but we Grew up in the eighties in a single parent family which at times the parent was out of work, we were always fed well in main meals, there was no snacks no sweets no new trainers no fifty inch tv's in the front room. But healthy home cooked food and healthy if unexciting pack lunches for school. And that was on fecking Thatchers benefit system not the one that currently has the three unemployed families on my street with more material goods in and sitting parked at the front of their houses than I have now after decades of work. And yet they're all AdHD'd to the hilt as they stuff ready meals and chips and smoke 30 a day while complaining how its so expensive to buy an apple, carrot, leaks onion barley and apparently to boil water....and how they now can't work because they're chemically depressed and obese. It's a lazy excuse. Cooking isn't that hard, it's just time consuming. But with a little preparation in advance that can be avoided.... Badgers don't make people eat cheap burgers; in fact until recently those cheap burgers (being horse) posed more threat to cattle farmers profits than badgers..... I do sympathise with farmers being screwed into the ground but attacking the wildlife around them has unexpected consequences. Ask cereal farmers in another twenty years if they still think using pesticides was the cheapest most efficient long term option when there's no bees left to pollinate their crops.....nothing to do with removing all crop diversity etc etc...
Yeh! let's all head off to the good old days of the workhouse, the deserving and non-deserving poor with no regulation on food quality or price, with laws only regulating for the wellbeing of a minority (Corn Laws). Both of my parents worked full time. Food was cooked each evening to supplement my school lunch. But we did have snacks and the tobacconist had a whole counter devoted to childrens sweets - after sweets came of ration! So we also ensured that there was continuing employment for the regiments of dentists that were needed to look after our teeth. Food was cheap - we even had government policy dedicate to the provision of cheap food - but farmers did OK out of it! So why bash the farmers. How about the builders and engineers who filled our homes, shops, offices and factories with asbestos? How about taking a real look at the growth of the road industry - Beeching's report and the biggest fraud of Ernest Marples!. They've had far more impact on the wellbeing of the whole nation. In reality, when was the last time you saw a badger (other than road-kill)?
And why bash the badgers? Yes they do carry TB, but so do a whole host of other wildlife (cattle, deer, llamas, pigs, domestic cats, wild carnivores (e.g. foxes) and omnivores (e.g. mice, rats and other rodents)). As noted, carrying out a cull in one area disrupts the badger families and results in a rise in cases of TB in neighbouring areas. And when the dust settles, back comes brock and the TB levels rise again. Unless and until you eradicate all natural reserviors of TB in the immediate and surrounding areas, any action taken in isolation is a pointless sop to particular pressure groups, in this case, Farmers (a core Tory demographic in danger of defecting to UKIP over various European Agricultural policies) Therein lies the reason for the slaughter. Should we be surprised?
It has already been hinted at here that local culling could magnify the T.B. problem and that is how I see it as well. Badgers live within defined territorial boundaries - culling disrupts the organisation of these groups increasing the risks of disease transmission. The focus should be on cattle based measures and vaccination of badgers themselves - as has been done in Gloucestershire for the last 5 years. If research and vaccination programs cost money then the consumer will quite simply have to pay more if he persists in eating beef 7 days a week - a practice unheard of in former times and which, in light of the methane emissions from this industry, has no viable future.
But my point is not that Badgers should or should not be killed, it's questioning the hysteria that is being stoked-up by so called animal activists for their own good. Now I have only seen brief extracts of the report on the Irish system. That appears to have had a significant effect on the spread of TB. However, I have no information on how well the system is being policed.
Err, not quite the point I was suggesting, but I can see this one being even less popular. Culling the local cat population might meet even more resistance (not from me, mind. The batards love to **** on any spare part of my garden...) and an army of septugenarian spinsters wielding zimmer frames on the barracades might garner even more press coverage...
Also, the tory minister has said they intend to eradicate TB in cattle inside 25 years. **** all chance of them achieving this is all they are going to do is shoot brocks...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Badger_culling_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycobacterium_bovis For any who would like to get up to speed on the issue...
Come off it. In percentage terms a minimal number of badgers have been trapped and vaccinated in Gloucestershire! No cattle have because there is no approved vaccine for any meat that enters the EU food chain. Now, find an acceptable and effective vaccine and I'm sure the vast majority of farmers would be only too willing to vaccinate their herds. Here in Somerset that appears to be the consensus amongst farmers.
