Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015

Baroness Byford Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for introducing this Motion to Regret. This is a complex and very technical issue, but at its heart is the importance our society and our Government attach to the welfare of animals at slaughter.

First, I must acknowledge that there are a number of measures in this regulation which are improvements to the previous regulations, and I commend the Government on that. Notably, these include the requirement for abattoirs above a certain size to have a designated animal welfare officer whose job is to ensure that welfare requirements at killing are observed and effective. They also include the requirement that the personnel working in the killing process in abattoirs are appropriately trained and have certificates of competence. These are positive and welcome measures.

However, as noble Lords have said, there are other features of the regulations pertaining to poultry that do not prioritise animal welfare. Of specific concern is the failure to specify particular parameters for the electrical stunning of poultry in water baths. Previous rules did not specify the electrical current and frequency to be used, and it has been recognised that under certain conditions—low current, for example—animals may not be properly rendered unconscious before the neck-cut to sever the blood vessels kills them.

As a result of a thorough review of these issues by an expert panel convened by the European Food Safety Authority, the EU formulated regulations to include recommended levels of current and frequency in order to achieve the unconsciousness of animals more reliably. Why have these specific conditions not been included in the adopted regulations? The Government’s own Explanatory Memorandum suggested that the original regulations for England that contained specific conditions for stunning were withdrawn in 2014 due to concerns over,

“the potential impact on some limited aspects of religious slaughter”.

The noble Baroness has asked this question already—I promise that we did not confer—but I shall ask it anyway: what is the “potential impact”? The original recommendations include a range of conditions referring to current and frequency that research has shown reliably induce unconsciousness but do not kill the anima1. This latter is crucial to enable the stunning to be done in compliance with the requirements of halal slaughter, which requires stunning, if it is used, to be reversible—that is, recoverable—so that the animals are technically alive, though insentient, at the point at which their throat is cut.

I welcome the fact that the majority of animals subject to halal slaughter are stunned before killing. The WATOK regulations as originally drafted would enable effective but reversible stunning, which is acceptable for halal so far as I can see, so I am perplexed as to why the current WATOK regulations for England exclude these greater safeguards to ensure that poultry are effectively electrically stunned. Moreover, the lack of defined electrical parameters applies to all poultry in England. This could mean that millions of birds stunned for the non-religious market may not be as effectively stunned as possible, based on current evidence. As the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has pointed out, this is in contrast to the EU’s recommended requirements for all stunning, religious and otherwise; and, with respect to religious slaughter, is in contrast to the regulations adopted by Northern Ireland and Wales and de facto in Scotland. This is a gross anomaly within the UK and is difficult to understand. I would welcome an explanation from the Minister for this omission.

I stress at this point that the adopted regulations still allow religious communities the option not to stun. That is an option with which I personally do not agree, but it respects religious freedoms. As an aside, I find it of considerable concern that the number of sheep and goats killed without stunning in the UK has risen from an estimated 1.5 million in 2011 to an estimated 2 million-plus in 2013, based on the FSA’s survey of abattoirs in those two years. That is a regrettable trend that I argue is in the wrong direction for animal welfare.

In conclusion, I support the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in regretting the WATOK regulations relating to the electrical stunning of poultry. I contend that they are anomalous and regressive and do not enhance our national reputation for upholding animal welfare.

[Baroness Byford (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for bringing forward this short debate. It is entirely right that we should be having it, and I am very pleased to be able to add one or two questions to the Minister. Before I start, I should tell noble Lords that I am a former poultry farmer so I have been at the sharp end of the rearing, the breeding—and at the end, obviously, the killing of poultry. The one thing that we tried to do throughout our lifetime still applies to good farmers today: they are very keen that welfare is of extreme importance, whether at birth, through life or in death. I declare that I am an associate member of the BVA. I thank it for its briefing, which I think several noble Lords have referred to.

Over the years I have also taken part in the many animal health and welfare Bills. I know that if the noble Countess, Lady Mar, was well enough, she would be taking part in this debate tonight, because she is another person who takes great interest in trying to improve the lot of animal welfare.