But critics of the proposed agreement fear the zero tariffs and zero quotas deal that the government in Canberra is demanding would see British farmers and businesses undercut by Australian rivals, with concerns that cheap imports of beef and lamb could see demand for home-grown produce dwindle.
Ian Blackford MP, the SNP’s Westminster leader, has warned Scotland’s farmers and crofters would be disproportionately affected, with the country’s beef, dairy, sheep and grain sectors particularly at risk.
How ghastly that would be, that the British be made better off at the cost to a few porridge wogs.
All protectionists at heart!
But to hell with our poor. Let them eat cake!
The prisoners are revolting!
No tears shed of course for any Australian producers undercut by British rivals. When we export to you, that’s fair, but don’t you dare export to us… that’s unfair.
How many more arguments for Scottish independence do we need?
“Vote for independence and more expensive food”.
A sure-fire referendum winner.
About time we paid reparations for when we kicked our friends in the teeth in 1975.
Did the farmers complain about being undercut by cheaper EU produce when we were in the single market?
While NZ lamb is perfectly OK we always buy British lamb on the grounds that it usually tastes much better. I dare say it will also prove superior to Oz lamb.
NZ venison goes largely to Germany (I was once told): maybe the Kiwis will export more to us in future? The obvs meat to import from Oz is ‘roo. Delish, and it appeals to people who blindly accept the animal-fat-will-kill-you rubbish.
Why people don’t keep cold country ‘roos and wallabies hopping about in the Highlands beats me. You’d need high fences, I’ll grant you, to keep the ‘roos in and the bloody red deer out. But Jim has already explained that farmers’ hands are tied by HMG.
I’d love to see the SNP campaigning for independence with a manifesto to set the farmers free. But I don’t expect those proto-fascists to do anything of the sort. They’d probably object that the fences would keep walkers out.
@dearieme: are the high fences to keep the macropoda in, or the Lesser Spotted Animal Rights Cretin out..?
@Dearieme “The obvs meat to import from Oz is ‘roo. Delish,”
You obviously had a far better experience of it than I did. I had ‘roo in the wilds of Northern South Australia. (h/t Peter Schickele)
From then on, I’d choose the truck tyre instead: better eating.
“You can live on it, but it tastes like shit!”
Thanks to the dear old Rothschilds (particularly Walter, in Tring), we have wild wallabies in the Chilterns. Also glis and muntjac.
I read somewhere (here?) that Australian beef is a niche product, so far more expensive that it will still be twice the price of British or Irish beef even if there is no tariff.
Waving a transparent shroud is not a good look.
Has anyone told Ian Blackford that Australia is in the southern hemisphere? Lambs are born in August in Australia rather than February as in Scotland. Imports of Australian lamb are more likely to compete with pheasants than British lamb.
I hope this free trade agreement works out. I’d be worried that your superior industrial capacity would wreck such manufacturing capability as we have, but of course the Greens are rapidly deindustrialising us anyhow. Have I ever mentioned before what I think of the Greens?
The only problems I can see on the agricultural front are the idiots of PETA. (Their latest campaign was to protect the mice that were eating the crops.) They feel that the vile Mahometans kill animals inhumanely. So they oppose the shipping of live animals to Mahometan countries.
But I haven’t heard that you have special abattoirs where the slaughter takes place in the Mahometan fashion. So I suppose that’ll be ok.
By the way, I did try roo once. But only once.
“I had ‘roo in the wilds of Northern South Australia.” There’s your mistake then. I ate it in Adelaide.
I much prefer British lamb.
But I can’t afford it.
Here’s hoping that we get swamped with cheaper meat.
ps On the rare occasions that I could find lamb in German or Austrian supermarkets it was always from NZ.
I don’t know anything about sheep but when I raised goats we timed matings so that there were kids a couple times a year from different parts of the herd. Goats go in and out of estrus from roughly September to March.
@ Agammamon
Sheep normally mate in the autumn and produce lambs in late winter/spring. There are some breeds that can produce lambs at other times of the year but I have yet to see any summer-born or autumn-born lambs in the UK and so few born in late spring that one does a double-take and comments on it.
Ostrich tastes good. Does the same apply to Emu and Cassowary?
“Ostrich tastes good.” We’ve driven past an ostrich farm in NZ. Enterprising farmers, the Kiwis.
“Does the same apply to Emu and Cassowary?” I assume not, based on the absence of flocks in NZ.