MANUFACTURING industries in the UK have been in decline for many years, with the economy increasingly focused on the financial sector.
The general assumption has been that this was a natural progression in the face of cheap labour in the developing world.
Figures just released give a serious pointer to just how dependent the UK is now becoming on food imports, especially red mea
t and poultry. HM Revenue and Customs reckons that in the first nine months of this year imports of beef totalled 176,289 tonnes, an increase of more than 4,000 tonnes on the same period of 2006.
But that has to be considered in the context of the export statistics over the January to September period. In those months of 2007, which were severely hit by export restrictions following four cases of foot-and-mouth disease in Surrey, the outward trade in beef amounted to 45,288 tonnes.
This was almost 50 per higher than in the same months of the previous year, which obviously sounds positive. However, as every farmer and meat processor knows, trading conditions were extremely difficult during most of 2006.
The UK is now struggling to be 70 per cent self-sufficient in beef production - and that is following the decision almost two years ago to permit product from animals older than 30 months back into the food chain for the first time since March 1996. If cattle numbers continue to decline in line with recent census data, then the level of self-sufficiency may soon be down to as low as 60 per cent, at a time when world demand is increasing.
Scots consumers are not renowned as considerable lamb eaters, but the UK remains by some margin the largest sheep producer in the EU, having about 15 million breeding ewes, with Scotland having a productive flock of close on 3.5 million.
The news on imports and exports does not encourage positive thinking. In the first three quarters of this year the UK imported 95,496 tonnes of sheep meat. This was up by over 4,000 tonnes on the year. New Zealand has, as ever, been the major source, supplying 74,000 tonnes in the first nine months of 2007 and accounting for virtually all of the increase in imports.
However, the really bad news relates to exports from the UK of sheep meat: in the first three quarters of this year this trade declined from 61,565 tonnes to a mere 48,918 tonnes. FMD was clearly a factor. But the 15,000 tonne sudden drop in the balance of inward and outward trade has proven to be the hardest blow the UK sheep sector has had to suffer for at least 50 years.
Much the same holds true for the pig industry, where over that first nine months, exports struggled to reach 78,000 tonnes while imports soared to 332,739 tonnes. The trade deficit on this front has now increased from 155,000 tonnes to almost 160,000 tonnes.
Christmas is fast approaching and there is a real prospect of organic turkeys making as much as £100 each: the underlying picture is rather more sanguine than in other sectors. The import figures show that in the first nine months of this year the UK sucked in no less than 214,515 tonnes of chicken and turkey from a variety of sources around the world. That represents an increase of 26,000 tonnes. Meanwhile, exports from the UK fell by 9,000 tonnes to 270,000 tonnes, which is down by 23,000 tonnes for the same period just two years ago.
Rising costs of feed, fuel and fertiliser suggest that this growing reliance on imports of all meats will continue.
The full article contains 629 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
