01/12/21 Gene-edited farm animals, uncertainty over new subsidy payments, shortage of farm workers in Northern Ireland

Farming Today

• Episode: 01/12/21 Gene-edited farm animals, uncertainty over new subsidy payments, shortage of farm workers in Northern Ireland
• Website: Farming Today
• Feed URL: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qj8q/episodes/downloads.rss
• Duration: 00:13:16
• Published: 2021-12-01 07:00

A paper from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics calls for a new international agreement to be reached around welfare in any future gene-edited farm animals - to ensure it doesn’t cause them harm, or lead to farming methods with lower welfare standards. Later this week the Government will announce details about the new support payments for farmers, the Sustainable Farming Incentive. At an online conference yesterday for tenant farmers, run by the National Farmers' Union, the Farming Minister Victoria Prentis surprised delegates by saying that the details of subsidies in England "will change from year to year". And a Northern Ireland charity says that a lack of farm workers is causing a spike in calls to its helpline, with farmers there leaving the dairy industry because a lack of staff is making the job impossible. Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Beatrice Fenton.