| Archive for Downsizer For an ethical approach to consumption |
| Cho-ku-ri |
UnfairHow can our producers compete with this?500,000,000 wrongly labeled eggs 
|
||||
| Jonnyboy |
I wonder who they supplied, whenever I've bought stamped eggs they would have UK on then, IIRC. | ||||
| Behemoth |
I find it hard to beelive that we've consumerd that many fre range eggs - supplied to the food industry perhaps? | ||||
| Jonnyboy |
we eat nearly a billion chickens a year. that amount of eggs ain't a shock. | ||||
| bodger |
Not too much of a suprise really , where there's greed there's a way.
It begs the question, how much of the food labelled organic is actually organic ? Just as one egg looks like another, surely one cabbage also looks like the next and the same opportunity is there for the unscrupulous to cheat. |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
This is only one scam that has come to light, I am afraid that so many imported 'Organic' 'Free Range' 'Fair Trade' goods are probably nothing like they describe on the packaging. We are dumb enough to think everybody plays by the rules. 
|
||||
| bodger |
If you are in a situation where you can keep just two hens in the garden, you need never worry about buying another egg again.  Yet another reason for growing your own whenever you can.
|
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
Depends on what you feed them on, as kitchen scraps are banned and you have only the word of the feed merchant that the grain and pellets/meal are organic/GM free. Remember your eggs are not organic if the feed is not. |
||||
| bodger |
If you don't tell anybody you feed your chickens a few household scraps, I'm sure your secret will be safe with them.
Ours get rice when we make too much for a curry, bread scraps , the odd jacket potatoe and any left over vegetables . I don't think that there can be any small scale poultry keeper who doesn't do similarly. Its just a matter of common sense really. I think you'll find that its still legal to feed the left overs that I have mentioned. Don't forget the feed that was linked with BSE was virtually organic in as much as it contained dead sheep. Sheep are about the most naturally fed farm animal on the farm. |
||||
| Treacodactyl |
As has been pointed out here before, those sorts of things cannot legally be fed to poultry or other farm animals. From the DEFRA web site: http://www.defra.gov.uk/animalh/by%2Dprods/wastefood/formerfoodstuffs-qa.htm#7
Basically, my understanding is that you cannot feed any vegetable matter to your hens if it's been in your kitchen. So, I can feed home grown cabbage leaves to my hens if I remove the leaves in the garden, but if I bring the cabbage into my kitchen to remove the leaves or buy a cabbage from a supermarket I cannot then feed them to the hens. |
||||
| Jonnyboy |
I'm for the high jump then. | ||||
| bodger |
You obviously can't argue with the law but to say that food (not counting meat produce of course) which is fit for human consumption is not fit for chickens to eat is a farce.
|
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
Welcome to the Whacky world of DEFRA. 
|
||||
| JB |
So it's illegal to allow your chickens or ducks to do away with slugs and other beasties? |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
I've seen a hen eat a mouse. I wonder if it was a vegetarian organic mouse?
|
||||
| Treacodactyl |
I've never heard the regs interpreted in that way, I don't think slugs and other beasties could be described as human foodstuffs. |
||||
| Nick |
I don't think even DEFRA would describe them as products of animal origin. 
|
||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
ugh defra, dont get me started!  what a load of 'old flannel'! I feed my chickens what i want and they can try and stop me!
|
||||
| saffranne |
me too and yesterday all the hens was chasing my gold brahma because she had a frog and they all wanted it |
||||
| SheepShed |
Hear hear ! Our chucks eat what *they* want - and that includes sneaking into the house and trying to pinch food from the dogs bowls. I also use foul straw from the lambing pens as manure, burn hedge clippings and fill in pot holes with building rubble - I'd better be off down the cop shop and hand myself in as a serial regulation abuser. |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
So if a farmer fed his hens on 'Whatever he likes and stuff DEFRA" would that be o.k.? If there are rules, then they should be for everybody. No? | ||||
| Jonnyboy |
Are you becoming a fan of extensive legislation then? |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
No, the opposite.
|
||||
| hedgewitch |
I think there should be a distinction as to whether you are selling your produce or not. If I'm understanding correctly, the rules seem to applying no matter whether the chickens are for personal use or for sale? If it's not commercial, then I really think that is your business, not the business of the government. |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
What about feeding them to your kids? I agree with you really, I just think we are a bit hypocritical expecting commercial egg producers, even small scale, to do something that we can't be bothered to comply with ourselves. It is not fair. | ||||
| hedgewitch |
I think your kids are your responsibility. I don't, for example, agree with kids being fed a diet of junk food but, to me, that is the choice of the parent not the government. I think it is fair, as I think the legislation (whether I agree with it in the present form or not) is about someone producing food for someone else, where the end customer can't necessarily know for themselves how the animals are fed etc. If the livestock is just for me and my family, then that, to me, is different. Ideally I'd also like to see different regulations for small-scale and large-scale producers as applying the same rules to both doesn't seem feasible IMO. |
||||
| SheepShed |
If EU regulations as interpreted by DEFRA are to apply to farmers in the UK then they should surely apply to all produce sold in the UK.
At the moment we have the situation where UK farmers are subject to a raft of regulations for their produce whilst the supermarkets are full of produce from abroad that are subject to no such regulation - chicken from Thailand and other far east countries being a prime example. Plus the fact that some regs seem just plain daft and drafted by people with minimal knowledge of how agriculture actually works. For instance, as I understand it, if you clear muck out of a ditch this is then agricultural waste and has to be disposed of at an approved facility. Surely there are reasonable grounds for people to use a bit of common sense and not just slavishly follow the rule book ? |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
The same is true for stones lifted from a field prior to sowing. The stones are liable for land fill tax.
I know a farmer who took broken tiles from a factory to use in gateways, but the factory must now send it all to landfill and pay Gordon Landfill tax. The lunatics have been running the asylum for too long now.
|
||||
| Behemoth |
There are now three types of horse manure.
Horse manure: domestic - from a horse you own and keep on your premises for leusure purposes. Horse manure: Commerncial - from a stables run as a business or where the hosres stabled on your property are not your own. Horse manure: Agricultural - from a horse that is used for agricultural purposes such a ploughing or pulling a cart. In theory this should affect the disposal routes. |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
I wonder who the Horse Manure Inspector (H.M.I.) is? | ||||
| hedgewitch |
Are there even more groups for the manure of bulls? There's so much of it about I'm sure it needs it's own government department and a special minister. |
||||
| SheepShed |
Muck heaps larger than 50 tonnes now need to be registered and inspected annually - so there is actually a job of muck heap inspector. Now there's a career to aspire to. A local butcher told me of the day he was working alone in the shop - apart from the 3 inspectors watching him work to make sure he was doing it properly. Perhaps I'm just a grumpy old man and the next generation will find it unremarkable to have more people inspecting things than actually doing things. |
||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
no, thats exactly ther problem half the time - no distinction between commercial farms who feed the nation and petkeepers/smallholders who feed themselves and their families. |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
If it is science based, what is the difference? You are not just feeding yourself, but your children. They, I'm sure, do not have a say in the matter. | ||||
| Northern_Lad |
It's not the science, but the wording of the draft. Practically, there's no differnce between TD taking a cabbage into his kitchen, braking off the outer leaves and then passing them on to the birds, and Gordon taking a cabbage into one of his commercial kitchens and doing the same. However, TD is responsible for his health and those in his house. He eats the cabbage and the chickens (OK, the eggs, no need to worry the girls), it's a nice closed loop. Gordon on the other hand has no responsibility once the produce has left the kitchen; anything could have happened to it. |
||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
i believe its up to you what your kids eat, not the government. I wouldnt make my kids eat something i wouldnt, and im happy to eat the chicken because i'm happy with what i fed it. and guests and extended family are welcome to eat it, at their own risk!!! please remember we've been producing our own food successfully for years - thered be no human beings left if we hadnt!
Its different for a farmer who feeds the public. |
||||
| Northern_Lad |
I quite agree. You are probably well capable of determaning what's safe and what's not. Some people, however, think it's fine to eat fast food every day and wash it down with neat vodka. |
||||
| hedgewitch |
And some people even drink Ribena, but it's not the job of the government to stop them, I think. What's wrong with neat vodka?  
|
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
Its the burden of all these rules and regulations that is stopping farm gate sales and encouraging the importation of sub standard/ miss labeled eggs by their hundereds of millions. The point I was trying to raise is how can we cut the red tape that is strangling agriculture? | ||||
| hedgewitch |
It seems to me that the red tape is there for the big producers. Would it help to re-think what is required based on size of operation/production?
The big problem I always hit when I think about this is that the regulations are there for people who don't know their producers and can't really do as good a job as someone actually knowing someone else. Although this isn't food production, this has been going through my mind. I am interested in learning to ride. My neighbour has stables and horses and has invited me to go to her stables and have a go with a view to maybe taking lessons. I know my neighbour well and have got to know her over many years. I can see how she conducts herself, her life, how she is with her horses etc. I feel confident in trying out riding with her based on my own observations and judgement and on the personal recommendation of other people who know her and who I also trust. If I didn't know someone personally, I would maybe get on the internet or look in the phone book or at adverts in a horse magazine. Then I wouldn't have anything to base my own decision on and I'd be looking to fall back on qualifications, the testimonials of strangers, the meeting of regulations as they would be my only guide. And not as good a guide as getting to know someone. The main problem for me is that the world has got too big and complicated in ways that undermine my ability to choose for myself, though this is packaged and presented to me as a way that gives me more choice. 
|
||||
| Chez |
I think that rather than being based on science, it's a kind of cover-all blanket to try to prevent Evil Things (tm) getting in to the food chain. So in theory if the cabbage leaves have been taken off the cabbage in the kitchen, they could have rested on the same work surface as a meat product etc. etc.. It's legislation that assumes that people have no common sense. And often, the small or home producer has bucket loads more common sense than the large producer - cf the bits of dead birds in open bins that were hanging round BM's turkey plant. NOT common sense. It's very frustrating - I don't like being penalised because big business doesn't really give a s**t about food standards and has to be forced in to line by the law . But equally, better that than mass outbreaks of salmonella etc..
|
||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
if we farmed right we shouldnt even be worried about mass salmonella outbreaks
|
||||
| Jamanda |
But not everybody does, because some people are more interested in profit than animal welfare or the health or their customers. Those are the people the rules are needed for. |
||||
| Penny |
Just had a very sad conversation with the people who came to check us over for the rescue birds. A few days ago, they went to a free range egg farm to collect a fox that had been trapped in a shed, sure enough there were about 50 free range birds wandering about in a field outside, but there were also another few thousand in battery cages inside a huge barn.
Wonder what his eggs were labelled and sold as  or am I just an old cynic?
|
||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
but the honest people shouldnt suffer, yet again, due to these people - the efforts of defra and their ilk should go on THOSE not us, people trying to feed our families healthily. |
||||
| Nick |
Perhaps DEFRA should ask the bad guys to own up, and just concentrate on them.
Farmers, animal keepers and processors supply food to the entire nation. The health of the nation is entrusted to them. They have a responsibility to safeguard it on everyone's behalf. And some of them don't. Without regulations and paperwork for traceability, many more of them wouldn't. Yes, there's paperwork, yes there's red tape, and yes, there's too much. But, you know, every job has paperwork. It should be dealt with a bit more realisitically on all sides, and I mean both how regulations are enforced, and how much whinging certain sections of the industry do. It would be lovely if it all vanished, and we could trust people to operate businesses for the right reasons, but we know they don't. We know we'd end up with more BSE, more FMD, more animal cruelty, more crap in the food we eat. |
||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
but strangling people with red tape isnt going to make it easier for us to eat better food. the regs often put too many obstacles in the way of smaller producers.
all the effort going into sorting that paperwork out could be going into tracking downthe cowboys EFFECTIVELY - ie, going and visiting the farm for theirselves and seeing exactly waht goes on and using their COMMON SENSE
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/no2defra/ |
||||
| Cho-ku-ri |
I agree. Like many other things in the U.K. some people are better at filling in the forms, talking the talk and get on that way. I would rather reward those that walk the walk, by looking after their animals kindly and efficiently. | ||||
| Nick |
Hm, the last two posts from people who ignore the DEFRA rules in various places. Yes, of course you'd rather the rules weren't there. | ||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
becvause i dont agree with those particular rules and i dont think im alone.
i've never said i dont think the rules should exist, i just think common sense should be applied, when cooking them up and enforcing them! |
||||
| Nick |
Well, if you're happy to pick and chose which rules apply to you and ignore the ones that worry you, why bother with the petition. | ||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
because its not fair on the guy who has a herd of 600 prize winning pedigree cows culled and loses his livelihood, because a few numbers dont match on the paperwork. I want the rules changing, not to just 'break' them. | ||||
| Nick |
Wow, when did that happen? | ||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
quite recently!!! thats what made me start it!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=443362&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true#StartComments and why cant we make use of all the thousands of unwanted male dairy kids and calves by training them as harness animals and going to town in a goat/ox cart to do our shopping, thereby also helping the environment? DEFRA's rules........
|
||||
| Behemoth |
Well that looks like a fundamental cock up and no reason to change. Either Defra got it wrong and he should have legal redress or he got it wrong. Keeping a record of what animals you've got and which ones are which is fundamental to monitoring movements, not nit-picking. | ||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
its not like its an isolated incident though, and thats not the sum total of why i want defra to change. | ||||
| MarkS |
Is that Daily Mail article the whole story?
At the risk of being pilloried, the DM is hardly an unbiased source. Where is the real coverage / real story ? |
||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
on that particular story, unsure but here's some more:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/devon/4562062.stm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/6125482.stm http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=430376&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/21/nbook21.xml http://www.warmwell.com/07jan2007.html thats all the same incident and while they were chasing down poor harriet, the one WITH the bse was 'forgotten' about http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/01/21/nbse21.xml |
||||
| SheepShed |
Perhaps not. Ian Potter's blog on QuotaNews, a dairy industry website says : "The names of David Dobbin and his partner Susan Lofthouse are well known to several in the dairy industry. For most of 2006 the duo have been on a farm in North Cheshire looking after around 580 cattle many being dairy cattle on behalf of a Leeds finance firm ICFL who lifted cattle from a Cumbrian farm in April 2006. In what was described as a multi Agency swoop the police, fraud squad, a helicopter and trading standards swooped on last Friday and slaughtering of the cattle commenced on grounds of animal welfare. We understand that around 100 cattle were slaughtered before it was stopped and that the remaining cattle have since been relocated to the site of Nantwich Show. An enforcement officer for Chester Trading Standards confirmed they have been monitoring the farm for a long time. Surprisingly a representative for ICFL on Monday commented “I would be surprised if there is an issue with my cows”. This surprised us given the fact that Dobbin was employed to look after the cows and clearly the finance company were not monitoring cattle welfare." More to it than meets the eye it appears, and far from being his own 'pedigree' cattle they were actually dairy cows owned by a finance company. |
||||
| Tradbritfowlco |
IF the second account is true - its down to which you believe |