Post-Brexit outlook poses challenge

Rhys Llywelyn, Meat Promotion Wales’ (HCC) market development manager, has used a keynote address at a major agriculture conference to outline the challenges that Brexit uncertainty poses for red meat exports.

Welsh lamb and beef are two of Wales’s most iconic food brands. The Welsh red meat industry is currently underpinned by exports; particularly in the case of lamb where a third of the country’s production is exported to the EU.

Rhys Llywelyn told industry leaders in Aberystwyth that the uncertainty over ‘Deal or No Deal’ - whether tariff-free trade with Europe would continue after 2019 -posed unique challenges for promoting red meat.

“Exports are very important for our industry as they help to maintain prices during times of peak production. In the case of lamb in particular, it also gives the chance to achieve carcase balance, with export customers preferring different cuts to UK consumers,” explained Rhys.

He said that overseas trade was up in 2017, with encouraging growth in markets such as Germany, but the future of this business depended on whether a Free Trade Agreement between Europe and the UK was struck before Brexit takes effect in March 2019.

Thys tells me: “The uncertainty creates a major dilemma for HCC in prioritising where to spend scarce resources. If a trade agreement is reached, maintaining our existing relationships with retailers and foodservice companies in Europe will be imperative. However, if there’s no deal, the prospect of high tariffs to export to the EU under WTO rules means that we must also prioritise developing newer markets further afield, and also make more of the domestic market.

“We’ve been helped by support from the Welsh Government for our enhanced export plan, but this is a challenging period,” he added. “Free Trade Agreements, and also obtaining market access to countries where we currently don’t have permission to export red meat such as Japan and Saudi Arabia, are out of our hands. But we’ll continue to work on several fronts, alongside our farmers and processors, to maximise opportunities over the next two years.”

In order to help farmers prepare their businesses for Brexit, HCC recently co-organising a successful roadshow meeting with the AHDB, at Llandissilio.

Double standards?

A new ruling by the BBC on the use of social media by a freelance BBC presenter has raised allegations of double standards from the Countryside Alliance.

Dr. Adam Rutherford presenter of Radio 4’s Inside Science, asked his Twitter followers to write to their MPs in protest following the reappointment of Labour MP Graham Stringer to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Following a complaint the BBC rebuked Rutherford as he had ‘potentially compromised the BBC’s impartiality.’

Paul Smith, head of editorial standards and commissioning policy, BBC Radio, said: “However, any BBC presenter - freelance or otherwise -needs to consider how their outside comments might impact on the work they do for the BBC. On this occasion, in my view, Dr. Rutherford’s comments on Twitter potentially compromised the BBC’s impartiality on this issue.

Yet the BBC, and the BBC Trust, had previously rejected a complaint about the campaigning activities of another freelance presenter Chris Packham who had described farmers and those involved in country sports as the ‘nasty brigade!’

Mr. Packham also uses twitter to encourage people to write to MPs and take other actions on any number of animal rights campaigns.

In its ruling, the trust said Chris Packham was a freelancer and did not count as staff or a regular BBC presenter or reporter, and thus was not bound by rules against expressing opinions on public policy issues.

In March, another freelance BBC presenter, Dame Jenni Murray, was reprimanded by the BBC after writing an article on transgender issues. The BBC said that it had ‘reminded her that presenters should remain impartial on controversial topics covered by their BBC programmes.’

Tim Bonner, chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, suggested to me: “This whole situation is becoming increasingly farcical. The BBC spent a year tying itself in knots finding reasons not to uphold our complaint against Chris Packham, but has found another freelance presenter guilty of exactly the same sort of behaviour in a matter of days. Chris Packham has not compromised the BBC’s impartiality on a range of animal rights issues, he has destroyed it, and if the Corporation is to start to rebuild its reputation with rural people it needs to act on his behaviour consistently with the way it had dealt with other freelance presenters such as Adam Rutherford and Jenni Murray.

“The impression that the BBC is currently giving is that there is one rule for all other BBC presenters, but no rules at all for Chris Packham.”

Gratitude

If I’d be asked this very moment what I am praying for…I wouldn’t ask for wealth and fame but my answer would definitely be the chance to live a long healthy life. That is what I wish too for my family and friends all over the world. As we go through each day however with all its challenges and the myriad tasks that await us from the moment we open our eyes, at times we fail to eat well and on time.

At times, life becomes too busy that we couldn’t even have a moment to spend buying fresh fruits and vegetables and settle for whatever food in the refrigerator that is easiest to prepare.

Sleep time is often shortened because of too many things to be done even at night. I’ve been commending myself the past weeks for being able to shuffle my different roles as mother, daughter, wife, sister, granddaughter, aunt and friend etc with sufficient ease and energy (Contributed).

Be aware

A man and a woman were having a quiet, romantic dinner in a fine restaurant. They were gazing lovingly at each other and holding hands.

The waitress, taking another order at a table a few steps away, suddenly noticed the woman slowly sliding down her chair, under the table and under the table cloth, but the man stared straight ahead.

The waitress watched as the woman slid all the way down her chair and totally out of sight under the tablecloth. Still, the man stared straight ahead.

The waitress, thinking this behaviour a bit risqué and worried that it might offend other diners, went over to the table and, tactfully, began by saying to the man: ‘Pardon me sir, but I think your wife just slid under the table.’

The man calmly looked up at her and said: ‘No, she didn’t... she just walked in.’

Confucius

He say: OK to let a fool kiss you, but not OK to let a kiss fool you.

Also: Better to lose a lover than love a loser.

And: Drunken man’s words often sober man’s thoughts.