Perthshire farmer Martin Kennedy, commenting in his role as vice president of NFU Scotland, has urged the BBC nationally to ‘take a real good look at themselves and start reporting the real facts in a balanced manner instead of misrepresenting views and reports.”
Drawing a distinction between the support food and farming gets from BBC Scotland and what the industry gets at a UK level, Mr Kennedy (pictured above) said that some recent reporting nationally by the BBC has been done in a manner that not only undermines the integrity of what should be a highly thought of British organisation, but has massive implications on an agricultural industry that has welfare standards and environmental credentials that are the envy of most across the world.
In this context, the union has written to the BBC this week to complain about its poor reporting around the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report.
“The report calls for change in all industries, and I fully agree that all industries including agriculture must change,” commented Mr Kennedy in a blog post on the union’s website.
“But if you read the BBC headlines or listened to the national news, you would believe the IPCC report’s only solution is to adopt a vegetarian or vegan diet. It did not say that.
“It states, in fact, that ‘balanced diets featuring plant-based foods, such as coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, and animal-sourced food produced sustainably in low greenhouse gas emission systems, present major opportunities for adaptation to and limiting climate change’.
“That point was not reflected in the BBC headlines. Instead, the BBC, on its national news, tarred Scottish and UK farming with the same climate change stick as irresponsible countries across the world.”
