While the industry is seemingly on the ropes from yet another study which shows that eating processed meat – in this case, specifically, bacon – can damage your health, the better news is that above all the bluff and bluster of veganism, anti-meat eating partisanship and climate change 'specialists', the Great British Public have been voting with their money.

These good tidings come courtesy of AHDB's take on Easter weekend spending which shows that both red meat and potatoes have been top of the shopping lists. Maybe it's not just the industry that's punch-drunk with scare stories, it would appear that the GBP is also.

The more cynical amongst us all would think that there is some big hand guiding all of this guff. And you would be right. James Porter in his Farm View column (see right) this week forcibly and knowledgeably argues that the 'hand' that is guiding us is gloved with a political bent; and not, as you would expect, one based on peer reviewed, independent research and analysis, by scientists with no axe to grind.

We have to face up to the fact that most of these 'scare' stories are driven by the tangled web of politics, rather than the reality of common sense and fairness. But it is insidious, for instance, that many of the EU directives which have reduced our armoury of pesticides and herbicides has been driven by a 'green' fingered hand.

Surely, for the sake of those that all these machinations impact on – the agricultural industry, proper science, politics and the public's health – there should be a more reasoned approach and not one tinged with a lack of fidelity to working together to produce straight-forward policy direction for the 'greater good'.

It has been said before, but worth saying again. There is nothing in this world that is without risk, but it would be good if those that are supposed to guide us do so by allowing non-partisan facts to be part of the wider discussion, instead of siding with not even vaguely disguised prejudice.

The world has enough prejudice in it, without denying us the facts that would allow us to make our own decisions about what food and drink to eat – which are, after all, the very basics of life.

It was heartening to see QMS come out of the corner fighting on behalf of the industry. As it has always done, it reasons that 'balance' is the most important part of what's in the weekly shopping baskets of the nation – and that red meat is an essential part of it, as is dairy, eggs, fruit and vegetables.

In a sea of reason against a tide of clap-trap, we just have to hope that this will be enough to persuade the GBP that this is a more rational argument extolling the virtues of buying in to proven production standards, that some of the more sensationalist 'research' – which is either clearly funded by someone with an axe to grind, or is looking for new funding streams – has forgotten to inform them of!