When farmers put up signs in county to defend UK meat

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THREE local farmers were so incensed with what they saw as injustice against the farming world and specifically the threat to British meat, they took to the road back in the 1990s.

They put up a total of 12 signs on seven roadsides around Hereford , changing them every week.

They were even placed on a bridge which could be seen from the M5.

There was also a tongue in cheek reference to huntingThe campaign was also supportive of British lamb (Image: Anonymous)

An MP saw those and then brought the matter up before parliament.

One of the most cutting of the billboard: " I like my beef on the bone and ministers on the rack".

That was a direct battle line drawn between farming and the then Minister of Agriculture Farming and Food, Jack Cunningham.

He was in post from May 1997 until July 1998, but it was not a happy appointment.

The Prime Minister Tony Blair put Minister Cunningham in his first cabinet as agriculture minister - seen as a last-chance posting following what was widely seen as an unimpressive stint as shadow National Heritage secretary.

The big signs were put up around HerefordshireThe slogans were delivered in the dead of night (Image: Anonymous)

According to the BBC: "It was a tricky time to have the job, given the long-running crisis over BSE and beef. He vowed he would act as the consumers' champion, but ran into accusations of "nannying" when he introduced the ban on beef-on-the-bone."

On December 16 1997 the ban on British beef on the bone came into effect in response to concerns about the risk of mad cow disease (BSE) and its potential link to variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

The ban prohibited the sale of beef on the bone and related products like T-bone steaks and oxtail. The regulations were revoked in 2008 after the BSE outbreak was contained.

The signs urged shoppers to taste the difference of British beef.Another play on words - having a stake in the future of farming (Image: Anonymous)

Arguably much of the distrust and unhappiness between farmers and the powers of parliament can be directly traced back to that time.

But while farmers' anger was real, but they also wanted to make a comic point (and the farmers still asked the Hereford Times to keep their identities secret).

So at least one of the signs, as you can see, showed some rather big bottoms as juicy cuts of meat.

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