Farming Today This Week

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Farming Today: 03/10/20 - Farming Today This Week: Beef slaughter age, seaweed farming and spelt

03/10/20 - Farming Today This Week: Beef slaughter age, seaweed farming and spelt

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, 03/10/20 - Farming Today This Week: Beef slaughter age, seaweed farming and spelt

Should beef cattle be slaughtered younger to reduce emissions?

Charlotte Smith discusses whether beef cattle should be slaughtered at a younger age to reduce emissions.

Beef production has been in the spotlight for its carbon footprint and there have been many people encouraging us to eat less beef.  Now, the National Beef Association is suggesting farmers should send their cattle for slaughter at a younger age - the idea being that animals that live shorter lives produce fewer emissions. They're proposing a tax on animals raised for more than 28 months. The proposals have been put out for consultation to their members across the country - but it’s received short shrift from some, and especially from beef farmers who have pasture-fed slower growing cattle, including rare breeds. 

Meanwhile, a lot of work is going into developing diets that reduce the amount of methane cattle produce. We hear from a company trialling feed containing red seaweed on two farms in Ireland. 

In the summer, after a public campaign that raised more than a million signatures, the Government set up a new Trade and Agriculture Commission. It includes representatives from the National Farmers Union and the British Retail Consortium - among others - and its job is to advise Ministers. Some hope it will be able to prevent imports that would undermine British standards of food production, but according to a new coalition of environmental organisations set up this week, the Commission’s not good enough. We hear from The Future British Standards Coalition.

And pasta is usually made from durum wheat, which is difficult to grow in the UK. We meet an Italian pasta maker based in London, who is on a mission to make UK-grown pasta from heritage wheats.

Presented by Charlotte Smithy
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Heather Simons

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