Category Archives: Farming

EU agrees to chop meaty names from vegetarian and vegan food products

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Lawmakers will outlaw use of 31 meat-related names as part of efforts to help livestock farmers in food supply markets

EU lawmakers have agreed to ban meaty names such as steak and bacon for vegetarian and vegan foods, but “veggie burgers” and “meat-free sausages” will remain on the table.

Negotiators from the European parliament and EU council of ministers found a recipe for compromise on rules for food names on Thursday, although critics said they were creating needless complexity.

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Germany moves to legalise wolf hunting in response to livestock ‘bloodlust’

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Lower house votes in favour of polarising law after rapid increase in population and attack on grazing farm animals

Wolf hunting will be allowed in Germany under legislation passed by the lower house of parliament in response to a rapidly growing population and a sharp rise in attacks on livestock.

The return and growth of the wolf population in the last three decades has emerged as a wedge issue in Germany, the land of the Brothers Grimm who popularised the spectre of the Big Bad Wolf.

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Syngenta says it will stop making pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease

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Company will halt production of controversial paraquat weed killer by end of June as it faces thousands of lawsuits

Syngenta, maker of a controversial pesticide linked to Parkinson’s disease, said on Tuesday that it will stop making its paraquat weed killer by the end of June.

The announcement comes as the company is facing several thousand lawsuits brought by people in the US who allege they developed Parkinson’s disease due to their exposure to Syngenta’s paraquat products.

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Beef and lamb get 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, study finds

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Report says common agricultural policy provides ‘unfair’ levels of support to unhealthy, meat-heavy diets

Beef and lamb receive 580 times more in EU subsidies than legumes, a report has found, despite scientists urging people to get more of their protein from less harmful sources.

Analysis by the charity Foodrise found the EU’s common agricultural policy (CAP) provides “unfair” levels of support to meat-heavy diets that doctors consider unhealthy and climate scientists consider environmentally destructive.

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With neonicotinoid pesticide ban, France’s birds make a tentative recovery – study

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Analysis shows small hike in populations of insect-eating species after 2018 ruling, but full recovery may take decades

Insect-eating bird populations in France appear to be making a tentative recovery after a ban on bee-harming pesticides, according to the first study to examine how wildlife is returning in Europe.

Neonicotinoids are the world’s most common class of insecticides, widely used in agriculture and for flea control in pets. By 2022, four years after the European Union banned neonicotinoid use in fields, researchers observed that France’s population of insect-eating birds had increased by 2%-3%. These included blackbirds, blackcaps and chaffinches, which feed on insects as adults and as chicks.

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Watchdog rules Red Tractor exaggerated its environmental standards

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The Advertising Standards Authority agrees with River Action that the food safety body’s 2023 advert misled the public

The UK’s advertising watchdog has upheld a complaint that Britain’s biggest farm assurance scheme misled the public in a TV ad about its environmental standards.

The Red Tractor scheme, used by leading supermarkets including Tesco, Asda and Morrisons to assure customers their food meets high standards for welfare, environment, traceability and safety, is the biggest and perhaps best known assurance system in Britain.

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New Zealand accused of ‘full-blown climate denial’ over cuts to methane reduction targets

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Farmers praised the move, but scientists and opposition parties criticised it as ‘weak’ and ‘unambitious’

Environmental campaigners have accused New Zealand’s government of “full-blown climate denial” after it slashed targets for reducing emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming.

New Zealand’s right-leaning coalition government outlined plans on Sunday to reduce methane emissions by between 14 and 24% by 2050, compared to 2017 levels.

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Kenya’s Turkana people genetically adapted to live in harsh environment, study suggests

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Research which began with conversations round a campfire and went on to examine 7m gene variants shows how people survive with little water and a meat-rich diet

A collaboration between African and American researchers and a community living in one of the most hostile landscapes of northern Kenya has uncovered key genetic adaptations that explain how pastoralist people have been able to thrive in the region.

Underlying the population’s abilities to live in Turkana, a place defined by extreme heat, water scarcity and limited vegetation, has been hundreds of years of natural selection, according to a study published in Science.

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Critics decry White House’s Maha report on chronic illnesses in children

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Report omits limiting pesticides and ultra-processed foods even as RFK Jr pledges to fight against childhood obesity

The Trump administration released its second Make America Healthy Again (Maha) report, this time on chronic illnesses in children, confirming a leaked report from last month that the administration would stop short of proposing direct restrictions on pesticides and ultra-processed foods.

On Tuesday, the Make America Healthy Again commission published a 20-page report that attempts a balance for the priorities of health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s supporters with the interests of influential farming corporations. It also urges an overhaul of the nation’s vaccine injury system and tighter oversight of certain prescriptions.

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Marks & Spencer food chief calls for ‘concrete target’ on British produce

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Alex Freudmann says ministers need to increase proportion of food eaten in UK that is grown or reared in Britain

Marks & Spencer’s head of food has called on the government to set a legally binding “concrete target” to increase the proportion of food produced at home, as he warned that Britain was becoming “less and less self-sufficient”.

Alex Freudmann, the managing director of the upmarket grocer’s food division, which works with 10,000 British farms, said: “If ministers are committed to domestic food supply, then they need to prove it, and that’s why we’re backing our farmers’ calls for a clear and concrete target to increase the proportion of food eaten in Britain that’s grown or reared in Britain.”

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Deforestation has killed half a million people in past 20 years, study finds

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Localised rises in temperature caused by land clearance cause 28,330 heat-related deaths a year, researchers find

Deforestation has killed more than half a million people in the tropics over the past two decades as a result of heat-related illness, a study has found.

Land clearance is raising the temperature in the rainforests of the Amazon, Congo and south-east Asia because it reduces shade, diminishes rainfall and increases the risk of fire, the authors of the paper found.

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Farmers displaced by $1.5bn Trump golf course reportedly being offered rice and cash

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White House denies suggestions resort in Vietnam presents conflict of interest amid row over compensation rates

Villagers whose farms in Vietnam will be bulldozed to make way for a $1.5bn golf resort backed by the Trump family have reportedly been offered rice provisions and cash compensation of as little as $12 for a square metre of land by state authorities.

Thousands of villagers will be offered compensation based on land size and location, according to a report by Reuters. The agency spoke to elderly farmers who said they feared they would struggle to find a stable livelihood.

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Plan to reintroduce banned pesticide in France overruled by constitutional council

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‘Duplomb law’ provision to allow use of acetamiprid, toxic to pollinators, found not to abide by environmental charter

France’s top constitutional authority has ruled against the reintroduction of a pesticide that is harmful to ecosystems, saying it is unconstitutional.

The decision on Thursday night deals a blow to the government. It comes after weeks of opposition from the left, environmentalists and doctors, and a record-breaking 2m signatures on a petition against a bill that would have allowed a pesticide banned in France in 2020 to come back into use.

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Risotto rice under threat from flamingoes in north-eastern Italy

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Farmers are seeking ways to fend off birds who are stirring up soil in flooded paddy fields in Ferrara province

An unusual bird is ravaging crops and infuriating farmers in north-eastern Italy: the flamingo.

Flamingos are relatively recent arrivals in the area, and have settled into the flooded fields that produce rice for risotto in Ferrara province, between Venice and Ravenna.

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‘We’ve made progress’: environment secretary is upbeat despite Labour’s struggles

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Steve Reed says changes to living standards are happening and will make a big difference to trust in government

It was probably easier for Steve Reed to feel more cheerful about Labour’s most torrid week in government while sitting on bales of hay in the blazing sunshine about 40 miles from Westminster.

The environment secretary might have sympathised with Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall – he has experience of bearing the flak for some of the government’s most controversial decisions on family farm taxes – but at Hertfordshire’s Groundswell festival, named the Glastonbury for farms, he may simply have been happy not to be pelted with manure by unhappy farmers.

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Ice raids leave crops unharvested at California farms: ‘We need the labor’

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Trump’s immigration crackdown has made many immigrant farmworkers scared to go to work

Lisa Tate is a sixth-generation farmer in Ventura county, California, an area that produces billions of dollars worth of fruit and vegetables each year, much of it hand-picked by immigrants in the US illegally.

Tate knows the farms around her well. And she says she can see with her own eyes how raids carried out by agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) in the area’s fields earlier this month, part of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, have frightened off workers.

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Greek PM vows to investigate €290m ‘fake’ farmer fraud scandal

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Kyriakos Mitsotakis sets up taskforce over alleged scamming of EU agricultural funds after resignation of five senior officials

The Greek prime minister has vowed to get to the bottom of how a scheme of fraudulent EU subsidy claims could have operated undetected in the country for years, as he admitted that the scandal had revealed “the state’s inadequacy” in dealing with corruption.

Faced with revelations that “fake” farmers had been scamming designated agricultural funds to the tune of a reputed €290m (£249m), Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Monday a special taskforce would be set up to “immediately and exhaustively” investigate the illegal payments.

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Flavour of gin and tonic could be impacted by climate change, study finds

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Volatile weather patterns may be altering taste of juniper berries – a key botanical in the spirit – scientists say

The flavour of a gin and tonic may be impacted by climate change, scientists have found.

Volatile weather patterns, made more likely by climate breakdown, could change the taste of juniper berries, which are the key botanical that give gin its distinctive taste.

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Dangerous pesticides and pet flea treatment detected in English rivers for first time

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Exclusive: Wensum and Tone found to have high concentrations of chemicals that are toxic to aquatic life

Dangerous modern pesticides used in agriculture and pet flea treatment have been detected for the first time in English rivers, research has found.

Scientists have called for stricter regulation around high-risk farming pesticides and flea treatments for pets because of the deadly effects they have on fish and other aquatic life when they make their way into rivers.

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Cheaper imported chicken and beef increasingly seen in UK supermarkets

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Grocers turning to Australia, Poland and Uruguay for meat, prompting claim they are undermining British farmers

Cheap chicken and beef from Australia, Poland and Uruguay is on the rise on UK supermarket shelves, according to the National Farmers’ Union, as supermarkets look for money-saving options.

The NFU regularly monitors supermarket shelves and notes that Morrisons is now selling raw chicken from Poland in its poultry aisle. Chicken in Poland is generally produced to different standards from those in the UK, and is cheaper as a result. Morrisons requires that for its UK chicken, poultry must be kept at a maximum stocking density of 30kg/m2, giving the chickens more space to roam. In Poland, this is up to 39kg/m2.

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