Chris Packham, that vile man who once told people who didn’t agree with eco zealotry to stand in a bucket of oil and set fire to themselves, has been at it again.
This time, taking aim at UK farmers, the already beleaguered farmers are struggling to put food on their own table whilst getting up at 4 am to put it on ours. Chris doesn’t care about these suffering humans, though.
From trail hunting to pig farming, his righteous lecturing is relentless. And with the government seeming to despise rural communities as much as him, his constant media presence makes him look like the voice of the people.
This week, Packham turned his attention to Farmers. Fresh from a YouTube documentary called Greenwashed, he discussed his plan with a young journalist to stick shock images of farm animals on supermarket meat packets. The idea is to make shoppers feel guilty about buying and eating meat and change their habits.
He compared it to cigarette warning labels, you know, the ones with black lungs and emaciated dying people, showing pigs in farrowing crates to make people rethink buying pork.
Packham, who became vegan in 2019 after years as a vegetarian, clearly wants consumers to confront what he sees as the horrors of modern farming.
And while his intentions may be to protect animals, the reality on British farms is very different. It's also a dictatorial effort to tell us how we must feel and act.
According to the Food Standards Agency’s 24–25 Animal Welfare Report, breaches of animal welfare are extremely rare. Just 0.1 per cent of animals were affected on-farm or during transport, and only 0.0033 per cent faced issues at slaughter. Most issues are minor, horrible, but minor.
Think of a sunburned pig, not the extreme cruelty Packham portrays. In fact, the UK’s animal welfare standards are among the best in the world: sow stalls were banned in 1999, two-thirds of eggs are free-range, and most sheep are pasture-raised.
Chris Packham's latest woke crusade crosses a line. He must not get away with this - Renee Hoenderkamp | Getty Images
I know many farmers, and I hear and see the care they give their animals. I also know how important they are. For those of us who eat meat, 75 per cent of us, we would prefer to buy it from our hard-working farmers who toil to give us the food we want and enjoy. Few of us truly recognise the hideously hard and gruelling life of a meat-producing farmer, but we appreciate the products.
Packham’s strategy is straight out of the mightier-than-thou playbook; package extreme views with his earthy, relatable charm. But this has real consequences. Trail hunting is labelled “medieval savagery,” encouraging saboteurs to harass law-abiding citizens. His campaign against pig farmers risks more unnecessary regulation from Defra, with bureaucrats eager to impress.
Chris Packham is clearly a talented naturalist and TV presenter, judging by the amount of coverage he manages to generate. Best known for Springwatch, Autumnwatch, and Winterwatch.
He is a skilled headline grabber. He has a knack for stirring controversy and creating drama, often, as now, painting hardworking farmers in an unfairly negative light. All designed to shame, shock, and guilt us into a lifestyle he has decided is better than ours, and we just need education.
To suggest that we should be shocked by meat labelled as bad and then turn vegan is ridiculous. Can you imagine a sticker on a bunch of Asparagus: this vegetable will make your pee smell. It is up there with this kind of tactic.
And if British livestock farming were wiped out tomorrow, the result would almost certainly be more imported meat and often from countries with lower welfare standards. So animals would feed us that are really being raised in horrific conditions.
This is a point that rarely gets much attention.
And then there is the science. A vegan diet is rarely equivalent to or as healthy as a meat diet. And I know, I see the blood results of vegans, and most are deficient in one or more essential nutrients.
Less than perfect vegan diets can lead to deficiencies in Vitamin B12, iron, and calcium, requiring careful planning or supplementation to match the nutrient density of a balanced, moderate-meat diet.
How can a diet that routinely needs a supplement (ultra-processed foods) to keep you nutritionally balanced? And before you shout, of course, a perfectly and carefully planned vegan diet can be balanced, but while many vegans report that their diet provides all necessary nutrients, research indicates a significant portion of this population is at risk of deficiency, particularly if they do not take targeted supplements or consume adequate fortified foods.
At the end of the day, the truth about UK farming is far more balanced than the green zealots would have us believe. Farmers care deeply for their animals, and British standards are high.
While protecting wildlife and raising awareness are important, demonising an entire industry doesn’t help anyone, especially the very animals Packham claims to champion.
Coupled with this nanny state approach to managing every aspect of our lives to save the planet, I have had enough. To Chris Packham, no – I will not allow you to dictate my habits. You do you. The rest of us are grown-ups; we will do us.