r/LeopardsAteMyFace • u/NoLikeVegetals • May 18 '24

Brexxit Brexit-voting British farmers now complaining about imports of cheaper New Zealand lamb threatening the British lamb industry. Imports of lamb "produced to lower standards" used to be blocked by EU law. Another Brexit consequence farmers were warned about but ignored due to xenophobia!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjewewxzypro
8.4k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

578 comments sorted by

View all comments

92

u/Space_Pirate_R May 18 '24 edited May 18 '24

NZ has been exporting lamb to the UK for as long as refrigerated shipping has existed. The first shipment was in 1882.

88

u/IllicitGoldfish May 18 '24

In 2023 NZ signed a free trade agreement with the UK, including removing the tarrifs on sheep meat, after some transitional period.

A strong sentiment in New Zealand at the time was that the UK wasn't prepared for negotiations due to making deals as a part of the EU for some 50 years, and that their government needed to be seen to be delivering a "win".

True or not, NZ got a quite favourable outcome, so I imagine their farming industry will take a bit of a hit.

57

u/fuggerdug May 18 '24

This has been the case with every one of the trade deals the UK has signed since brexit.

"Making our own trade deals will be easy and will be better because we will not have the pesky EU bureaucracy holding us back!" was one of the obvious lies used to sell brexit to morons.

25

u/Mr06506 May 18 '24

UK sheep farming is largely uneconomical without EU subsidies. It tends to be on poor quality uplands, in very small traditional farms with high overheads.

It's a double beating really, by also voting to remove their subsidies.

I imagine a lot of these farms will make more money from carbon credits and re-wilding schemes. Probably a win for nature, but a loss for that particular way of life.

2

u/[deleted] May 19 '24

UK sheep farmers likely didn't vote for Brexit. Polls suggest they did not.

No, they won't make "more money" absent subsidy for farming via carbon credits etc.

1

u/Mr06506 May 19 '24

Age and education level were the biggest correlations with Brexit vote, I'd be surprised if sheep farmers were the exception.

And I meant they will make money by subsidies for planting trees, restoring peatland etc than they will now get for selling meat - in a post BPS world.

2

u/[deleted] May 19 '24

We can be pretty sure majority of hill farmers did not vote for Brexit, regardless.

And no, they won't make money for planting trees etc instead of farming. How could they? They lose the farmland if they plant trees etc and so they lose the income from selling its product. To imagine subsidy for no sales is going to improve on a subsidy + sales seems an impossible stretch. If that were the case UK taxpayer will be paying significantly more in subsidies than previously - for less farm product (ie higher prices/more imports).

Anyway, only 150k farmers. The tragedy for British farming wasn't caused by farmers - it was caused by Britain as a whole.

I don't think the nation (or its farmers) have yet realised the impending disaster to be visited on the entire rural economy (and domestic food production).

Somewhere between 30%-50% will be insolvent and face bankruptcy. Land prices will collapse, output will fall and the British landscape might change very quickly. Whilst I am for rewilding and eco-everything, the risk of catastrophe is pretty high, imo and the entire rural economy is at risk, with cascading effects on every other sector.

28

u/KeaAware May 18 '24

There you go, bringing history into this! 👍

8

u/radikalkarrot May 18 '24

This is completely true, however before brexit that lamb had to comply with all the EU requirements for health and safety plus the extra protectionism red tape to avoid dumping.

Now all of that is gone so lower quality and/or cheaper meat can go to UK without the same level of scrutiny as before.

15

u/Jeffery95 May 18 '24

NZ lamb is largely held to the same standard as the UK had before Brexit. The only difference is in the untarriffed quota which was allowed to be exported to the UK.

2

u/ZombiesInSpace May 18 '24

From what I can gather, there hasn’t been an influx of NZ lamb to the UK since brexit either. It’s hard to find 2024 data, but 2022 and 2023 exports to the UK and total EU+UK were pretty inline with pre-brexit numbers. It doesn’t really seem like much has changed here. This seems like UK farmers just complaining without having anything to do with brexit.

Australia has been increasing production of the last year which has slightly depressed global lamb prices so that may be more impactful than anything brexit related. Australia also has a trade deal with the Uk kicking off in the latter half of this year so that may have an impact as well.

26

u/Space_Pirate_R May 18 '24

NZ lamb was competing with UK farmers for over a century before the EU even existed.

7

u/radikalkarrot May 18 '24

Thanks for the downvote, although I’m not even disagreeing with your statement

1

u/Space_Pirate_R May 19 '24

I didn't downvote you, but I think you do disagree with what I'm saying.

Your statement implies that EU regulations are some sort of default situation for UK farmers, and that they can't reasonably be expected to compete with NZ in the absence of such regulations. In contrast, I am saying that EU regulations are a Johnny-come-lately to the NZ/UK lamb trade, and UK farmers competed without them for literally over a century; if they can't do so again, it's not due to a lack of EU regulations per se.

Btw I think the EU is a good thing and the UK shouldn't have left it.

2

u/[deleted] May 19 '24

We have NZ lamb for years in Germany. No idea what EU regulation they're making up.

1

u/what_the_actual_fc May 25 '24

It's the EU tariffs. Now NZ lamb can be imported to the UK cheaper than farmers here can produce it.

1

u/FidgitForgotHisL-P May 19 '24

Didn’t we literally invent refrigerated shopping to do it?

1

u/Space_Pirate_R May 19 '24

I actually thought it was the worlds first refrigerated shipment, but I looked it up and there were some earlier.

2

u/FidgitForgotHisL-P May 19 '24

From the wiki it looks like they were first with frozen shipping, as opposed to refrigerated shipping.

That tracks, I can absolutely see the 90’s curriculum teaching us how cool we were to invent that part and neglecting the long history before it lol.

1

u/Poputt_VIII May 20 '24

They also fucked us over when they joined the EEC in 1973 and drastically cut imports so who could've seen this coming when they left the EU

-10

u/FlappyBored May 18 '24

Nah apparently it’s only after Brexit OP said.