Silence of the lambs

The Graun is well into Project Fear mk. 146 these days,having got over the hurt of Tory members rejecting their advice not to elect Johnson. The lead story on the website is this:

Stop playing Russian roulette with sheep industry, Johnson told 

Johnson himself had said:
 

he would “always back Britain’s great farmers” and promised to “make sure that Brexit works for them”...“That means scrapping the common agricultural policy and signing new trade deals – our amazing food and farming sector will be ready and waiting to continue selling ever more not just here but around the world,” he said. “Once we leave the EU on 31 October, we will have a historic opportunity to introduce new schemes to support farming – and we will make sure that farmers get a better deal.”

And:

Alun Cairns, the Welsh secretary, agreed that farming was a winner from having access to EU markets but said there was potential for exports to new markets...Asked for his response to threats of civil unrest, he claimed UK farmers could export their meat to Japan rather than Europe.

A bit like recommending cake instead of bread, perhaps. Others predict bloodshed, of course:

40% tariffs on meat exported to the EU could lead to the mass slaughter of sheep.[As opposed to letting them gambol freely for the rest of their lives as with the EU]...Helen Roberts from the National Sheep Association in Wales said it...could lead to civil unrest among sheep farmers...."... I suspect there will be protests."

Sheep farmers seem to have seen an opportunity here:

Roberts said she did not want to see a mass slaughter for welfare reasons so the government needed to get cold storage in place and talk about public procurement of lamb meat...Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers Union, said there would be no market for 40% of the UK’s lamb meat in the event of a no-deal Brexit....the government would need to look at forcing hospitals, schools and other public bodies to buy lamb meat.

Very sensible -- poke lamb down the throats of the sick and those at school and arrest all vegetarians as unpatriotic. The real problem seems to be not the increase in price due to tariffs,however, but a possible punitive EC policy:

In a no-deal scenario, the 37,000 carcasses a week that are usually sent to Europe would be stopped overnight under strict EU import rules that require de facto licensing for all farm exports.

Should do wonders for the price and will be very popular among European consumers.

Meanwhile. on Newsnight ( 31/07/19) a rather nice young woman read from a Welsh Farmer's handout to tell views that 90% of Welsh lamb goes to the EU (it is actually 90% of exports -- either 60% or 70% of total output is sold in the UK). She went on to dismiss any Government plans to buy up surpluses -- there just wasn't the storage capacity she told us (she totalled the lamb and beef annual output to make this claim).Then she slowly worked to a predictable joke -- we would have a meat mountain just like all those food mountains we once rebuked  the EC for! Probably an Oxford Arts graduate, or related to someone already at the BBC, but her heart was clearly in the right place.