Freda Scott-Park retweeted
Loch Lomond event to explore benefits of trees on farms 🌳
Farmers and land managers are invited to a free event at Balloch on 17 September exploring how trees and woodlands can support productive farming businesses.
forestry.gov.scot/news/loch-…
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
FSS and @foodgov have published new guidance to help UK businesses understand the latest position on Bisphenol A in food contact materials. It covers EU requirements, key deadlines and the current position in Great Britain. More on our website: bit.ly/4oUuhQL

ALT A graphic titled "New Guidance for Industry on Bisphenol A and Its Derivatives" featuring text about new joint guidance with the Food Standards Agency. It aims to help industry understand EU requirements and legal positions in Great Britain. The Food Standards Scotland logo is at the bottom left, with a computer icon on the bottom right.
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦
Jeremy Clarkson has never pretended to be anything other than exactly what he is
Brutally honest. No oil painting. A pot belly, a lifelong smoker, a drinker. Not exactly the modern alpha male or is he?
And somehow that is the whole point
I have watched him for most of my life
First as a motoring journalist who could make you want a car you would never own and never need
Then as something bigger
The loudest, funniest, most unfiltered mouthpiece the ordinary person ever had
A man who said the thing everyone was thinking while the rest of television tiptoed around it
From Top Gear he built something that should not have worked
Three middle aged men, The Stig, a track and a chemistry you cannot manufacture
James May the patient one
Richard Hammond the brave one
And Clarkson the force of nature dragging both of them into chaos and somehow back out again
When it all fell apart at the BBC he could have disappeared
The fracas was not his finest hour and he never pretended it was
He owned it, apologized and carried on
No reinvention, no groveling tour, no carefully managed comeback
He just kept being himself and let the work speak
The move to Amazon and The Grand Tour proved something I think a lot of people missed
The format was never the magic
The men were
You can take three friends out of a studio and drop them anywhere on earth and the loyalty between them travels with them
But it is Clarkson's Farm where the whole picture finally comes into focus
Here is a man with nothing left to prove walking into a field he barely understands and refusing to fake competence he does not have
He has run that farm at break even and then at an outright loss in full public view
No editing it into a success story
No pretending the numbers work when they do not
His farm manager hands him one brutal truth after another and he sits there and takes it
A whole season swallowed by drought even after he leaned into robotics and the most advanced farming money could buy
Technology was supposed to be the answer and the weather did not care
He showed that too
Most people would have cut it
And through all of it he has done something quietly remarkable
He has dragged the plight of the British farmer into the light
The paperwork, the council, the margins that vanish, the weather that ruins a year of work in a week
People who had never thought about where their food comes from suddenly cared because he made them care
And then there is the part nobody warned me about
Men who raise animals for meat and still love them
Who name them, worry about them, sit with them
Who treat them with respect and dignity right up to the moment they cannot keep them
And feel the full weight of sending them off
He does not hide that
He lets the camera sit in the discomfort of it
The grief of a man who knows the deal he made and still finds it hard
That is not weakness
That is honesty most people are far too afraid to show
We live in an age that rewards the polished, the curated, the carefully built personal brand
And here is a scruffy, swearing, chain smoking farmer who has done the opposite of all of it and won
He stayed exactly who he was while the world begged him to become a product
That is the whole secret
There is no act
There never was
And that is exactly why we keep watching
Praying for a full recovery mate, looking forward to another season of Clarkson's Farms!
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
Financial abuse is a form of domestic abuse.
A parent that refuses to attend court leaves the other parent stuck in this loop of abuse, with no means of escaping.
I raised this with the Solicitor General, asking why parents who fail to show up to court evade prosecution.
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
"Livestock use 83% of the world's farmland and give back just 18% of our calories."
There it is. The killer stat, lifted off the infographic, courtesy of Poore and Nemecek's enormous 2018 study in Science: nearly 38,700 farms across 119 countries. Damning. Wildly inefficient. Somebody fetch the cow a P45.
One small question before sentencing. Where is that 83% of land?
It's grass. Worldwide, around two-thirds of all farmland isn't cropland at all; it's pasture and rough grazing. Fell, moor, steppe, marsh, scrub.
Marginal land, to use the term of art. Too steep, thin, wet, or cold to grow a single thing a human can chew.
In Britain, about 65% of farmland is good for grass and little else. You are welcome to plant lentils on a Cumbrian hillside. You will then watch them sit there, baffled, and die.
What that land does grow is cellulose, the most abundant biomass on Earth and a substance your gut regards as scaffolding. You cannot eat it. Nor can any pig, chicken, or vegan.
A ruminant can. That is the entire trick. She walks across the inedible two-thirds of the world's farmland and turns it into milk and meat.
So the cow isn't squatting on prime arable while the nation starves; she's working the land that grows precisely one crop, grass, which she eats, which is the whole point of her.
Calling that inefficient is like calling a fishing boat inefficient for its poor performance on the motorway.
Then there's the calorie sleight of hand, which is somehow the dafter half.
Yes, beef is a modest share of calories. So is a glass of cooking oil. You can get calories from a spoon of sugar. Calories are the easy part.
The hard part is everything else the steak is carrying. On DIAAS, the actual measure of protein quality, beef scores about 1.0 to 1.1, with milk and eggs a shade higher.
Wheat limps in around 0.45. Almonds manage 0.40. The FAO won't let a protein scoring under 0.75 make a quality claim at all, which quietly disqualifies most of the plant kingdom.
Then there's B12, of which plants contain essentially none, plus heme iron and zinc in a form your body can actually be bothered to absorb.
Ranking food by raw calories and declaring the steak a failure is like ranking a library by how well the books burn.
By that measure, petrol is the finest meal in Britain.
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
A solar farm just opened where a beef farm used to be.
This is a real sentence about a real place. In Lincolnshire, near Glentworth, on land that grew British food for six hundred years. 1,214 hectares of grazing pasture and cropland, the size of Heathrow Airport, now under panels for the next forty years.
It is called Tillbridge Solar. It was approved in October 2025. The locals were against it. The local council was overruled by central government. The farmer who used to graze cattle on that land will not be grazing cattle on that land in your lifetime.
Down the road, Springwell Solar got the nod the same month. 1,280 hectares. The largest in the country. Same story. Beef and arable, gone.
This is happening everywhere. CPRE found that 59% of England's biggest solar farms are on productive farmland. In one Lincolnshire district, 7% of the land is now solar panels. Three solar farms, Sutton Bridge, Goosehall, and Black Peak, are built entirely on the highest grade of agricultural land we have.
Now here is the part nobody mentions at the dinner party.
The roofs of the warehouses on the A1 are empty. The supermarket distribution centres are empty. The Amazon sheds, the MoD car parks, the industrial estates outside every town in England, all empty. CPRE's own numbers show that putting panels on the roofs we already have would meet the entire 2035 solar target on its own.
The panels are not going on the roofs.
The panels are going on Lincolnshire because leasing one field from one farmer is easy, and leasing a thousand roofs from a thousand owners is hard. The shortcut is the pasture.
You will not be told to stop eating beef.
You will simply find that the farm that produced it is now a power station, and the beef in the supermarket has come from Kansas, and it costs more, and the cow is no longer in the field, because the field is no longer a field.
Cover the roofs. Leave the pasture.
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
There's a proven link between people deliberately harming or sexually abusing animals and going on to commit domestic abuse.
@TheLinksGroup have been highlighting this issue for years.
Currently the law does not allow us to identify these people early.
This needs to change.
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
A wool jumper, made in 1985, washed in cold water once a month, worn through three decades of British winters, would currently be sitting in someone's wardrobe doing fine.
A polyester fleece, made in 2026, machine-washed weekly, will start to lose its structural integrity within three to five years, shed an estimated 700,000 microfibres per wash into the water system, and end its life in landfill where it will persist for approximately 200 years.
The wool jumper:
- Came from a sheep
- Required grass and rain
- Will biodegrade entirely within three years of being buried
- Will keep you warm when wet
- Will not melt if exposed to a flame
- Will probably outlive you
- Cost £80 in 1985, which is £230 today, and represents the entire jumper budget for the next forty years
The polyester fleece:
- Came from an oil refinery in Texas
- Required hexane extraction, polymerisation and dyeing in three different factories on three different continents
- Will not biodegrade in any human timeframe
- Will get cold and clammy when wet
- Will melt against your skin if exposed to a flame
- Will be in landfill within five years
- Cost £40 in 2026, which means you'll buy ten of them across the next forty years for a total of £400, and the planet will still be eating the residue in the year 2226
But yes. The sheep is the problem.
The sheep, standing in a field in mid-Wales, growing a renewable fibre from grass and rain.
The sheep is the problem.
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
Today marks the start of our 13th annual #FarmSafetyWeek
13 years of stories
13 years of heartbreak
13 years of lives changed forever
but still too many rely on luck to get home safely
Please get involved all week - like & share our content or post your own 💛
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
…are the #bees are too. So as you reach for some liquid refreshment remember to top up our #wild friends too.
And be considerate and vigilant around the sources of #water you provide and keep in your garden/yard.
Please pass this on.
Thank you.
#Retweet for the bees!
🙏🏼🐝
11/11
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
🎉 Congratulations to Glenegedale House Islay ! 🎉
We’re thrilled to announce that Glenegedale House has won the Best B&B or Guest House Experience at the Highlands & Islands Thistle Awards 2024! 🏆 Congratulations!
Category sponsored by Abbey Ireland & UK. #HItA24
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
Minister for Agriculture + Connectivity @JimFairlieLogie confirmed today @future_vets_SCO that @scotgov will increase rates we pay (via @APHAgovuk) to official vets (OVs) in Scotland for work like TB testing, Anthrax + Brucellosis tests. New rate applies for work from tomorrow.
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
We were delighted to host Liam Kerr MSP to hear about SRUC’s progress towards Taught Degree Awarding Powers, Widening Participation via our tertiary education programmes at Craibstone’s Department of Rural Land Use and the School of Veterinary Medicine’s new BVSci Programme.
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
Charlotte almost didn't make it to University. As a care-experienced person, her educational career was disrupted, and she left school at 16.
Last week, she graduated from the University of Glasgow with first-class honours in History & Sociology.
She excelled through her sheer determination, hard work, and support of our @UofGWP team and community.
We're so proud of you, @charlottearmit7! ❤️
#UofGGrad24 #TeamUofG @UofG_Alumni @UofGSocSci @UofGArtsHums
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
Looking forward to @ChildreninScot conference on Thursday!! Together with @DrJoWilliams and our brilliant #AnimalGuardians team we @ScottishSPCA will be running a workshop on 'Understanding animal abuse & how to intervene with children and young people' #Support #CiSAC24🐾
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
As enthusiastic members of @lovelochlomond we were delighted to be asked to write a bit about our farm story for @ScotAgritourism month. Two farming businesses- us and @Lennoxoflomond offering warm hospitality to visitors to #LochLomond #ScottishAgritourismmonth
We've been down on the farm with @ScotAgritourism
As we approach the end of #ScottishAgritourismmonth, we’ve got the scoop from two of our Love Loch Lomond members.
Thanks to @Lennoxoflomond & @PortnellanFarm for contributing to our latest blog post: lovelochlomond.com/news/what…
Freda Scott-Park retweeted
I'm delighted to announce I have been elected to the RCVS Council (from July 2024) in the recent elections
@theRCVS
I'd like to thank the c1,750 colleagues who put their trust in me. I'll strive to do all I can for the profession over the next 4-years. Thank you.


























