Food and agriculture in Britain today is largely controlled by a cartel of supermarkets, many of which are selling ritually slaughtered meat without offering customers the option of making an informed choice by the use of labelling.
The food trade and global environment is being degraded as competition between the chains to reduce prices results in the import of foreign products often farmed under less control than British farms are subjected to.
We aim to increase the acreage of productive land by removing ineffective wind farms and returning to agriculture what have effectively become ‘brown field’ sites. Wind farms on uplands that detract from the beauty of our countryside will be de-commissioned and dismantled. Hill farmers will be encouraged, via tax breaks, to manage and make use of the grazing and environmental potential of their land.
We shall tax the unnecessary transportation of farm products from one end of Britain to the other merely to process and re-brand products.
Importers will be taxed on agricultural produce that could be grown in UK.
The practice of all methods of inhumane slaughter will cease. People requiring such produce for religious observance will have to import it from abroad. All non-humane slaughtered meat products from abroad will be labelled as such. Retail traders will ensure their meats that are ritually slaughtered are clearly labelled as such.
The state will provide farm machinery to groups of farmers within set geographical areas, enabling small registered producers operating land between 15 and 200 acres who cannot afford harvesting machinery of their own, to remain in business as custodians of our landscape. Such machinery will include tedders, cutters, balers, fencing borers, and prime movers, as defined by a local authority agricultural establishment schedule.
We will seek to return agricultural land owned by global corporations and supermarket chains back to the communities where they are present in order to establish Community Farms that can supply local schools, hospitals, old people, the unemployed and others with low cost, locally produced healthy food. These Community Farms will employ local people and will operate within our plan to create sustainable local economies that support local businesses that employ local people.
We will re-establish a Ministry of Agriculture to oversee food, farming, and environmental issues.
The use of mass sowing of nitrogen based fertilisers extracted from oil products will be discouraged and a return to traditional manuring encouraged.
Agricultural manpower will be supplemented by low category inmates from our prisons during intensive harvesting seasons and not by foreign labourers.
British fishermen will be granted exclusive rights to fish within British territorial and overseas waters, protected by the Royal Navy. We will also seek to establish Maritime Protection Zones to enable fish stocks to recover and create a sustainable fishing industry.
The Forestry Commission will be encouraged to plant native, British species instead of fast crop pine species, subject to local topographical considerations.
Most British woodland has been sold to foreign investors. This will be restored into British ownership together with all land and crops which have passed into foreign hands within the last forty years.
All packaging will, where practical, be of brown paper or cardboard, not oil intensive, non-recyclable plastic.
The Freedom Party supports the humane and compassionate treatment of all animals in Britain. We will prohibit all archaic, cruel and barbaric forms of ritualised animal slaughter that cause suffering to animals prior to slaughter.
The aim of the British Freedom Party is to produce as much agricultural produce as possible within Britain on farms owned by British citizens which employ British workers on a decent wage and which enables us to create a sustainable natural environment which benefits farmers, workers, consumers and wildlife.
