By Denis Sheehan MIH, Publisher, H&C News: Minister of State for International Trade backs importing NZ lamb as better for the environment.
In a quite ‘remarkable’ statement, the Minister of State for International Trade, Lord Johnson, is being reported as saying, it is better for the environment to eat lamb imported from New Zealand, than to eat lamb from here in the UK.
Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, Jane Dodds MS who represents farmers in Mid and West Wales was not impressed. She said the assertion was “an insult to Welsh lamb farmers across Mid and West Wales. The minister supposed to represent British people is commending New Zealand lamb over our own.
“Comments like these are yet another example of the Conservatives failing to understand or support our farmers. They serve only to undermine our farmers by failing to note the lower welfare standards for animals abroad.”
Dodds also took to twitter to vent her dismay tweting: “The Tories already sold our farmers out with botched trade deals, now they are rubbing salt in the wound by making false claims that kiwi lamb is better for the environment than local produce.”
Speaking last year on the UK’s post Brexit trade deal with New Zealand, shadow international trade secretary Emily Thornberry said the deal would reduce employment in the UK farming and agriculture.
Thornberry said: “It is a deal whose only major winners are the mega-corporations who run New Zealand’s meat and dairy farms, all at the expense of British farmers who are already struggling to compete. But for British jobs, growth and exports, this deal is yet another massive failure.”
How any economic benefit can be derived from the deal remains elusive. Even more so is how flying lamb 11,000 miles from New Zealand to the UK is better for the environment, only the Minister of State for International Trade can know.
Dominic Robert Andrew Johnson, Baron Johnson of Lainston CBE
Lord Johnson co-founded Somerset Capital Management with Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2007.
Johnson was Conservative party vice-chair from 2016 to 2019.
In October 2022 he was appointed by Liz Truss as a minister of state in the Cabinet Office and the Department for International Trade.
Johnson was immediately sacked by Truss’s successor, Rishi Sunak when he became Prime Minister.
Sunak then re-appointed Johnson as a Minister of State for International Trade on 24 November 2022.
Johnson has given more than £250,000 to the Conservative Party.
