British hypocrisy over food miles breathtaking

The Hypocrisy of the British over climate change is astounding. Self-serving political and commercial myrmidons, aided and abetted by a lazy media, have, from time to time, taken a stick to NZ over food miles, carbon footprints and other trendy global warming issues. When we've shown them to be what they quaintly refer to as "tosh" and we, more earthily as the backend product of a bull, they slink back into their holes writes the Dom Post. Not slow to spot a marketing edge, the supermarkets have fallen over themselves to prove they are leaders in promoting environmentally safe produce. One of their promises is to measure the carbon footprints of the goods they sell. That hasn't worried us because our world-leading science shows our food production and delivery systems are comparatively low users of carbon. Part of that is because almost all our exports go by ship. But at the moment there's an exception. Hundreds of tonnes of chilled lamb are being flown from New Zealand to Britain in time for Christmas. And who's paying for these meat cuts, packed neatly into the holds of passenger jets? The British supermarket chains.  The demand from British shoppers for Christmas lamb is so strong "“ not to mention the profits to be made from it "“ that the supermarkets will do anything to supply it. The winners in all this are NZ sheep farmers. Some chilled lamb is usually airfreighted in time for Christmas, but this year the demand is much, much higher than normal. Supermarket prices have skyrocketed to 6.94 a kg (NZ$15.92). For farmers with the lambs to spare, the returns are close to the magical $100 a lamb. A shortage of domestic lamb is behind the sudden demand. The British have gone chasing markets in France made more attractive by the exchange rate. At the same time, while the British shopper's taste for lamb has not diminished, the buying pattern has changed. People are buying less meat every time they shop, but they are shopping more often and eating at home more. Selling beef has been a hard slog for the companies, though. In the United States, which takes 75% of our beef for the hamburger trade, prices have been kept down by an influx of meat from dairy cows as the national herd goes through one of its regular culls. The recession-hit American diner has taken to eating more fast-food and demand for the better-quality beef cuts has slipped so badly many of them are being ground up for burger patties. But the future looks promising. A shortage of beef is predicted. Feedlots have been forced to close, the dairy cull is coming to an end and the US' big beef suppliers in South America are struggling with drought. This year might be a good time for New Zealand farmers to breed more cattle.