Sir, – I enjoyed reading Jim Brown’s recent Farmer's View column, where he discussed the factors surrounding the position of the Scotch beef industry in an increasingly global market, where volume, economies of scale, differing environmental conditions and regulation standards provide other larger countries’ industries with significant cost advantages.

I certainly agreed with his conclusion that the only way for our beef industry (and the Scottish food producing industry in general) to have a future is to continue to differentiate ourselves away from the mass market, and promote a product that has the very strong values of quality, provenance, high welfare standards and low environmental impact.

However, I was a bit confused on Jim’s view of growth hormone and GM use, as it wasn’t clear whether he supported those or not? If Scotland were to go down the road of using these technologies in our food production, it would completely undermine the years of work that has gone into building and maintaining the Scottish food brand, and remove any hope we would have of maintaining any differentiation against the global volume market producers.

Discussion of these issues are currently very timely, with the UK Government’s farcical and shambolic approach to Brexit negotiations delivering no clarity on what they are actually intending to do with international trade deals after we leave the EU.

The only indicators we have are leaks from Liam Fox’s International Trade Department, which paint a worrying picture of a government that appears prepared to do anything, including lowering environmental and regulatory standards, and removing protection on geographical food indicators – of which Scotland has 12 – to secure deals with the likes of Trump’s US.

For the sake of the future survival and prosperity of Scotland’s food and farming industry this cannot be allowed to happen.

Robert Macintyre

Newstead,

Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.