Did you know…? The meat and dairy industry produces more climate-changing emissions than every plane, train and car on the planet – 18% of the global total.
The Fix the food chain campaign aimed to shift government support away from the current food system — shipping high-protein animal feed from around the world to rear animals in intensive systems in the UK and Europe — and towards a ‘thriving yet planet-friendly farming industry’.
Our goals aimed to:
- Shift subsidies away from factory farming
- Support farmers to grow their own animal feed
- Supermarkets to offer fairer deals for everyone
We were out campaigning in and around Camden (with cow masks!) in 2009-2010 to get people to put pressure on MPs to change the current system. We had a great picnic and pinata event at St Pancras station highlighting the issues. And throughout 2010 hundreds of people across Camden wrote postcards to their MPs asking them to support the bill. Both Camden MPs Frank Dobson (Holborn & St Pancras) and Glenda Jackson (Hampstead & Kilburn) supported the sustainable livestock EDM.
The bill had its second reading debate in Parliament on November 12 2010. Unfortunately, despite a clear majority of MPs present supporting the bill the turnout was too low for the bill to proceed to the committee stage. However, the good news is that during the debate the Government conceded that action is needed to tackle the environmental impacts of factory farming. They just didn’t want to be pinned down to a legal commitment.
So the huge effort that many have made to encourage their MPs to support the bill was far from wasted. The important issue of the brutal and unsustainable nature of the animal feed soy plantations in South America has at last been exposed. FOE has made strong and positive links with UK farmers and farmers organizations. Most important of all is that the Government now know that their stated commitment to sustainable farming will come under careful and critical scrutiny.
We would like to especially thank Glenda Jackson MP who turned up and supported the bill on November 12.
Photos and press coverage from our Fix the Food Chain photocall, picnic and piñata event at St Pancras, November 2009: