Meat and Sour Veggies.

Will true Britons ever stand up and fight the authoritarian European Commission? Will they never rise from their Jeremy Kyle induced sofa slumber and cry out ‘Enough! Enough!’ If they don’t hurry up and revolt, they could be too weak in the future.

First they came for the smokers, then the drinkers, now the last refuge of the true red blooded Englishman is under threat. The EU is planning for a future, not just of Halal meat, but of no meat whatsoever.

The European Commission on Food Safety  (EFSA) is looking into a series of health threats faced by restaurant workers and vegetarian diners in European restaurants. The Schmallenberg virus has created widespread alarm following a Danish academic study on the effects of handling meat on restaurant workers. This is how it started for the smokers – fretting about the effects on those ‘forced’ to work in a smoky environment.

As the risk assessor, EFSA produces scientific opinions and advice to provide a sound foundation for European policies and legislation and to support the European Commission, European Parliament and EU Member States in taking effective and timely risk management decisions.

The resulting Green Paper, ‘Towards a Europe Free From Meat: Policy Options at EU Level’ was published last month, but has received scant attention in the Main Stream Media.

Several different policy options are available to achieve the meat-free objectives. The aim should be to find an option that best achieves the objectives while minimising costs and burdens. The regulatory options described below are listed in an order reflecting an increasing level of possible EU intervention (from continuing the current level of activity to developing a new binding framework based on EU legislation).

These policy options are not mutually exclusive and might complement each other. For example, a Commission recommendation could be an incentive for self- regulatory initiatives among stakeholders and Member States. Self-regulatory instruments, on the other hand, could serve as groundwork and/or supplement to binding legal regime (e.g. covering the venues where the legislation is not yet in force or those exempted from the meat ban).

It should be noted that the scope of the various policy instruments would differ. Thus, while EU worker protection legislation would apply to public places in so far as they are workplaces given the limits provided by the Treaty, a comprehensive ban on preparing or consuming meat in all public places could be encouraged through non binding measures (such as Commission or Council Recommendation), legislative measures adopted by Member States and/or by voluntary measures adopted by stakeholders.

In order to be effective, any regulatory instrument should also be equipped with a viable means of enforcement and a transparent monitoring regime. The introduction of regulatory measures, either at EU or at national/sub-national level, should also be accompanied by prior public consultation and information campaigns as well as an impact assessment.

The motivation is that it would help nourish an overpopulated planet with less environmental impact from factory farms and agri-business. It also reduces animal cruelty. Risk free for the Health and Safety freaks since it’s grown in a controlled environment with precision. Exact control of the omega 3 to omega 6 fatty acids. Your roast beef could have the nutritional profile of salmon. There’s also less waste. PETA fully endorses this since it’s cruelty-free.

Reading that document, it starts to make sense of the amount of adverse publicity there has been recently concerning the consumption of meat.

We have had the recent controversy over the consumption of that US staple food – the Hot Dog.  That traced back to an EU document from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study.

Then we had the Harvard School of Medicine study which claimed that cutting the amount of red meat in peoples’ diets to 1.5 ounces (42 grams) a day, equivalent to one large steak a week, could prevent almost one in 10 early deaths in men and one in 13 in women. One steak a week, and Soya burgers the rest of the time – they truly are preparing us for a peasant poor future!

The BBC has enthusiastically piled into the debate with the revelation that eating meat leads to a poor sperm count, and the truly virile exist on a diet of Muesli and Tofu, as served in the BBC canteen.

Naturally cultural and community leaders are having their say – the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations has gone so far as to publish a ‘worship’ guide to what they term ‘ethical eating’, or adherence to the EU commissions desire to put us all on a meat free diet.

I had thought that Professor Mark Post’s attempt at creating a ‘test-tube hamburger’ was in pursuit of the Vegan charity, PETA’s $1,000,000 dollar prize, but no, it seems he had hooked into even bigger bounty to finance his labours.

Scientists have claimed they would serve the world’s first test tube hamburger this October.

A team, led by Prof Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, says it has already grown artificial meat in the laboratory, and now aims to create a hamburger, identical to a real stuff, by generating strips of meat from stem cells.

The Dutch government are financing him, via a Professor van Eelen who holds the International patent, ready and waiting for the EU law to come into place – he paid Professor Post £220,000 for just that one Hamburger you saw on the TV news.

In 1999, van Eelen received U.S. and international patents for the Industrial Production of Meat Using Cell Culture Methods. A new discipline, propelled by an unlikely combination of stem-cell biologists, tissue engineers, animal-rights activists, and environmentalists, has emerged in both Europe and the U.S. Teams are forming at universities around the world.

Red meat is part of our heritage in Britain. We are a meat-eating nation, compared with nations in continental Europe. William Hogarth’s 1748 painting O the Roast Beef of Old England, or the Gate of Calais contrasted the beef-eating English to the famished French (and their Jacobite Scots allies) sipping their meagre potage, or nibbling on raw onions. It doesn’t look as though the EU has any plans to let us munch on anything other than a few grains of Chinese ‘food aid’ rice and a handful of Tofu.

Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!
Our fathers of old were robust, stout, and strong,
And kept open house, with good cheer all day long,
Which made their plump tenants rejoice in this song–
Oh! The Roast Beef of old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

But now we are dwindled to, what shall I name?
A sneaking poor race, half-begotten and tame,
Who sully the honours that once shone in fame.
Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

When good Queen Elizabeth sat on the throne,
Ere coffee, or tea, or such slip-slops were known,
The world was in terror if e’er she did frown.
Oh! The Roast Beef of old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

In those days, if Fleets did presume on the Main,
They seldom, or never, return’d back again,
As witness, the Vaunting Armada of Spain.
Oh! The Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

Oh then we had stomachs to eat and to fight
And when wrongs were cooking to do ourselves right.
But now we’re a . . . I could, but goodnight!
Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England,
And old English Roast Beef!

Are you really going to sit back and let this happen to you Britons?

Please retweet, the main stream media aren’t going to alert anyone to this document – and sign up to UKIP. No Bacon Sarnie tomorrow morning? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

Tagged as: Animal Rights Activists, European Commission, European Commission on Food Safety, European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition, Roast Beef of England, UKIP, Vegan activists, Vegetarians

Ms Raccoon lives in the Monbazillac area of South West France, renowned for its fine wines and gourmet food, so she frequently finds better things to do than sit in front of a computer all morning. She is liable to take off traveling at a moment's notice. Consequently this blog only gets updated these days when it is raining - and it doesn't rain very often round here...