From the editor: BBC's skewed agenda means farming has to be on front foot

Tin hats were donned across the farming industry in readiness for Monday night’s BBC1 documentary Meat: A Threat To Our Planet?, in which presenter Liz Bonnin explored meat’s impact on global ecosystems.

Focusing mainly on North and South America, Ms Bonnin seemed to have made up her mind right from the outset that meat’s impact on the planet was not justifiable and, with stony face, set forth on a semi-hysterical analysis of meat production.

Visiting pig farms in North America, she uttered the line ‘I do not think the general public has any idea about what is going on to produce the bacon they fry up’, as the emission-spewing helicopter she sat in passed over a number of housed pig units.

And that is the crux of the problem for British agriculture: by making such sweeping statements, she is giving viewers, many of whom will have little understanding of animal agriculture, the impression that all farming systems are the same.

In the pursuit of editorial balance it would have been better to counteract such images with examples of high welfare, grass-based livestock systems here in the UK, but I doubt that fitted the show’s agenda.