Marmite Ingredients

• Yeast Extract
• Salt
• Vegetable Extract
• Niacin
• Thiamin
• Spice Extracts
• Riboflavin
• Folic Acid
• Celery Extract
• Vitamin B12

Source: Marmite website

Milk from cows that test positive for tuberculosis (TB) would be introduced into the human food chain under reforms suggested on Tuesday by government advisers on farming.

More than 200 reforms to existing food safety and environmental regulations governing farmers and food producers have been put forward by the farming regulation taskforce, which reported to ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) on Tuesday. The group, made up of nine farming and food industry professionals, was set up last July, with the aim of scrapping swaths of legislation put in place over several decades to protect wildlife, the environment and human health. But farmers and food companies say some of the plans represent unfair and costly curbs on their freedom to do business.

Some of the proposed reforms are likely to be controversial, including softer tests on the use of pesticides, fewer inspections of farms, and more weight to be placed on private sector inspectors for the food sector rather than publicly appointed monitors, as well as potential restrictions on rights of way for ramblers.

The prospect of products from potentially TB-infected animals being sold to consumers would represent a marked change from current policy. Not all cows that test positive for TB are carriers of the disease, as other infections can also lead to a positive result, and pasteurisation should kill any TB bacteria that could be present in milk.

Under current rules, however, all animals that test positive are slaughtered and compensation paid, and their milk prevented from reaching the food chain. These rules exist partly because some farmers have attempted to relabel their cattle as TB-free by swapping cows with other herds, and because “raw” or unpasteurised milk can legally be sold in the UK, meaning that raw milk from TB cattle could enter the food chain if the rules are not well enough enforced. But the taskforce has suggested that pasteurised milk from “TB-reactor” cattle could be rendered suitable for some form of consumption.

Other proposed measures include reducing the burden of paperwork for farmers, which can entail presenting the same information several times over for different bureaucratic purposes, and easier planning permission for farm developments.

The taskforce also wants to make it easier for unemployed people to take on much-needed seasonal work on farms, without facing disincentives such as losses to their benefits.

The taskforce said: “The key strategic message from our report is that Defra, its agencies and delivery partners need to establish an entirely new approach to and culture of regulation – otherwise the frustration that we, farmers and food-processing businesses have felt will continue. The essence of this approach is about strengthening the partnership between government and the farming and food-processing industries.”

However, Gareth Morgan, head of countryside policy for the RSPB, said that the report was milder than had been expected. “This is not the bonfire of regulations that we had feared,” he said. “But there are still concerns.”

He pointed in particular to nitrates, which are included in the report. He said the regulation of nitrates entering the water supply could be weakened if the government adopts new rules before the European Union has put forward its proposals.

The government will have to decide which reforms from the report it takes forward and which it abandons, in what is likely to be a fiercely contested battle over the future of countryside regulation.

Agriculture minister Jim Paice said: “This is an impressive piece of work with strong recommendations for reducing the burden that red tape has on the people who produce our food… This was never about a bonfire of regulations but about changing the culture of how we apply and enforce regulation. We will continue to defend our high standards for environmental management, animal welfare and food safety. I am particularly interested in the recommendations to allow industry to earn our trust and reward good practice with less frequent inspections.”

The taskforce made clear that the direction of future policy should be towards lighter regulation, and that farmers should play a key role in determining what rules might be laid down in future. Richard Macdonald, chair of the taskforce, said: “We’ve listened to what farmers and food producers have to say about how regulations and processes could be improved without reducing standards; things like a simpler livestock movements regime, reducing paperwork associated with nitrate regulations and improving bureaucracy around the common agricultural policy. We’ve also looked at the big picture and recommend a new approach to regulation based on trust, responsibility and partnership between government and industry. Our recommendations won’t all be easy but they are credible and, I believe, now is the time for change.”

He added: “The farming and food processing industries need to contribute to economic recovery and produce more food in a sustainable and safe way. To make this happen, the government needs to change the way it deals with them. By accepting our recommendations Defra will show that it is prepared to do this. It is now for Defra, its agencies and delivery partners, and industry to respond to the challenge.”

But Morgan said consumers might not agree with the direction taken. He said: “The taskforce was set up to find ways to deregulate first, and to maintain standards second. But it should have been the other way round – ministers should be asking how can we find a way to do better for society, and if necessary we will regulate to do so. I’m worried about the government’s approach.”

Agriculture, the taskforce noted, accounts for £7bn per year to the UK’s economy and employs 534,000 people, while many more are employed by the wider food sector and the rural economy.

1.3bn tonnes of food is lost or wasted each year, UN food agency report says, and reducing losses in developing countries could have ‘immediate and significant’ impact on poor people (Claire Provost – guardian.co.uk – Thursday 12 May 2011)

Global warming has already harmed the world’s food production and has driven up food prices by as much as 20% over recent decades, new research has revealed.

The drop in the productivity of crop plants around the world was not caused by changes in rainfall but was because higher temperatures can cause dehydration, prevent pollination and lead to slowed photosynthesis.

Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, Washington DC, said the findings indicate a turning point: “Agriculture as it exists today evolved over 11,000 years of reasonably stable climate, but that climate system is no more.” Adaptation is difficult because our knowledge of the future is not strong enough to drive new investments, he said, “so we just keep going, hoping for the best.”

The scientists say their work shows how crucial it is to find ways to adapt farming to a warmer world, to ensure that rises in global population are matched by rising food production. “It is vital,” said Wolfram Schlenker, at Columbia University in New York and one of the research team. “If we continue to have the same seed varieties and temperatures continue to rise, then food prices will rise further. [Addressing] that is the big question.”

The new research joins a small number of studies in which the fingerprint of climate change has been separated from natural variations in weather and other factors, demonstrating that the effects of warming have already been felt in the world. Scientists have shown that the chance of the severe heatwave that killed thousands in Europe in 2003 was made twice as likely by global warming, while other work showed that the floods that caused £3.5bn of damage in England in 2000 were made two to three times more likely.

Food prices have reached new record highs this year, and have been implicated as a trigger for unrest in the Middle East and Africa. A rising appetite for meat is a critical factor, said Wolfram. “We actually have enough calories to feed the world quite comfortably, the problem is meat is really inefficient,” as many kilogrammes of grain are needed to produce one kilogramme of meat, he said. “As countries get richer and have a preference for meat, which is more expensive, they price people in poorer countries out of the market.”

“The research provides evidence of big shifts in wheat and maize production,” commented Prof Tim Wheeler at the Walker Institute for Climate System Research, Reading University, UK, who added it had involved “heroic” statistical analysis. But he said that, while long-term climate change impacts were another pressure on food prices, short-term price spikes were linked to extreme weather events, such as the Russian heatwaves and wildfires in 2010.

The study, published in the journal Science, examined how rising temperatures affected the annual crop yields of all major producer nations between 1980 and 2008. Computer models were used to show how much grain would have been harvested in the absence of warming. Overall, yields have been rising over the last decades and the models took this into account. The scientists found that global wheat production was 33m tonnes (5.5%) lower than it would have been without warming and maize production was 23m tonnes (3.8%) lower. Specific countries fared worse than the average, with Russia losing 15% of its potential wheat crop, and Brazil, Mexico and Italy suffering above average losses. Some countries experienced lower production of rice and soybeans, although these drops were offset by gains in other countries.

The losses drove up food prices by as much as 18.9%, the team calculated, although the rise could be as low as 6.4% if the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere strongly boosts plant growth and yields – a factor that is not well understood by scientists.

Global food prices have risen by about 200% in recent years, says Schlenker. Other causes of the rise are the increased demand for meat and the diversion of food into biofuels. Nonetheless, the researchers conclude that the negative impact on crops overall is “likely to be incurring large economic and health costs”.

The US, which has the world’s largest share of overall production, stood out in the analysis because it appears to have lost no production to climate change as yet. Schlenker said this was because the rise in temperature there was very small compared to other parts of the world. This was perhaps due simply to luck with the weather, or the cooling influence of aerosol particles, such as soot, that blocks warming.

“US farmers are having a good time in the sense that their yields have not been impacted much and prices have been pretty high, so for them it has been pretty profitable,” he said. “But most climate models predict that eventually the US will warm.”

Adapting farming to climate change could involved moving to cooler areas as existing areas warm, said Schlenker, but often soils are poorer in the new locations. He highlighted the potential of biotechnology – genetic engineering – to develop new crop varieties that are more resistant to heat, but said the potential remains unproven. “What happens over the next 20 years depends on how optimistic you are about finding those extra ways of adapting.”