This is worrying as fuck. I honestly thought that, after their long decline during the dog years of the mid to late 20th C., rare breed numbers were rising and their future slowly being secured. These figures from the Rare Breeds Survival Trust look like a looming fucking disaster zone.
I’ve written before about how the best way to secure their future is to eat these great animals; to demand their meat in the restaurants, shops and butchers that we use. But WE HAVE TO DO BETTER. Come on people. I’m serious. If Spain and France and Italy can do this — get their rare native breeds back and close to fully sustainable — then so should we.
Post-Brexit, it’ll be even more important that we get good meat, not the hormone-riddled, antibiotic, pumped crap that comes out of most of the rest of the world that they’re so keen to start selling us after the”barriers to trade” (AKA consumer protections) come down. So start eating. Now. Please, I’m begging you.