Agriculture Bill

Debate between Baroness Parminter and Lord Trees

Committee stage & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 7th sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD) [V]]

It is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Curry. On this occasion, however, I believe this amendment is a Trojan horse seeking to end the classification of gene editing as genetic modification and replacing the EU regulatory framework with the Americans’ proof of harm.

Good regulation is about managing the risks and the benefits of a process, and while we have heard about the potential benefits of gene editing from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, and other Peers, there are risks too. Although the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, may not wish to acknowledge these, I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, for articulating some of them. For brevity’s sake, I am not going to repeat them now.

I accept that the amendment sets out some undertakings before the Secretary of State could uproot regulations governing the food on our plate, but this Bill is not the place to do it and the amendment is, at the very least, pre-emptive. The Government must do two important things: first, they must lay before Parliament the policy statement on environmental principles as committed to in the Environment Bill, which will explain how environmental principles, including the precautionary principle, will be interpreted now we are outside the EU.

The Government have said that they remain committed to the precautionary principle. We are signatories to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which invites governments to take a precautionary approach with regard to synthetic biology. The Americans, with their proof-of-harm regulatory framework, uphold neither the convention nor the precautionary principle. Until Parliament has fully debated how environmental principles will be interpreted now we are outside the EU, there should be no consideration of changes to gene-editing regulations.

Secondly, the Government must introduce new laws on animal sentience, as they promised to do in the 2019 Conservative manifesto. These laws should place a duty to pay all due regard to the welfare needs of animals as sentient beings and, given that gene editing allows animals to be altered for food, would inform policy in this area. In America they sell AquAdvantage salmon, gene-edited to grow to size in half the normal time of three years. Animals are sentient creatures with intrinsic worth and should not suffer to obtain more productivity and profit. These invasive procedures can be painful, and animals that do not deliver the required traits are euphemistically “wasted”. It is not just me who is concerned. The Royal Society conducted research on gene editing in 2017 which found that the public were very concerned at its use on animals, particularly to increase the productivity and profitability of meat production.

The Bill rightly commits to the highest animal welfare standards and working within environmental constraints to enhance biodiversity and provide the food that we need. Into it has been smuggled this Trojan horse, studiously avoiding the words “genetic modification” or “gene editing”, at a parliamentary stage that limits wider debate. I cannot support this pre-emptive approach to remove a regulatory framework that takes a precautionary approach and requires mandatory food labelling. The welfare of our farmed animals, our biodiversity and public trust in our food are too important for that.

[Lord Trees [V]]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak in support of Amendment 275, proposed by my noble friend Lord Cameron of Dillington. Under strict regulatory processes, and after consultation—I emphasise that that is in the amendment, as referred to by other noble Lords—it is about applying exciting new technologies, supporting our superb UK biotechnology industry to continue as a global leader and an economic success. Above all, it is about strengthening global food resilience and security while potentially reducing chemical or drug use.

The amendment has particular relevance to plants but I want to support it with respect to animals and their diseases. I draw a contrast with the opinions of the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, who I respect immensely. The priority of disease control in animals increasingly lies in prevention, and key tools in prevention are management and husbandry, vaccines, and genetic resistance. Genetic resistance has of course occurred spontaneously by natural evolutionary processes in wild animals.

Apart from knowing what the R number is, many noble Lords will now be aware from the Covid-19 pandemic of the remarkable innate resistance of, for example, bats to viral disease. They carry infections that are lethal to humans, such as rabies and the Covid-19 virus, without apparent clinical disease. By definition, the process of natural selection occurs over many years, so conventional breeding methods to create disease resistance in domesticated animal species are extremely slow and raise real ethical problems.

Now we have the amazing potential ability to very precisely identify the parts of an animal’s DNA that permit specific pathogen invasion and then, in a very targeted way, adapt them by gene editing so as to be non-permissive to infection. This mimics changes to an animal’s DNA that might occur spontaneously but very rarely in nature, and does it in a fraction of the time. It is distinct from the wider techniques involving genetic modification yet is currently included within them and prohibited in current EU legislation, as many other noble Lords have said.

In relation to animal disease, there is already promising research to breed pigs with resistance to African swine fever, a highly infectious pathogen in pigs, distributed worldwide, that in recent years has killed millions of pigs in China, is now killing pigs and infecting wild boar, which are symptomless carriers, in continental Europe, and presents a real and present danger to our own domestic pig population in the UK.

The Roslin Institute at the University of Edinburgh has recently created, using gene editing, pigs with resistance to the porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus, a disease endemic in the UK pig herd and a welfare concern as a cause of severe disease and high mortality, as well as having a substantial economic impact.

Finally, I stress that unlike processes involved in gene cloning, for example, using gene editing to establish a founder stock which breeds normally involves relatively few animals and no more intrusive processes for the animals initially than are used in normal veterinary practice. I very much support this progressive, forward-looking amendment.

Trade in Animals and Related Products (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Debate between Baroness Parminter and Lord Trees

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Trees (CB)]

As the Minister said, this is a very large instrument, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, said, particularly complex and pretty hard reading. I am grateful to the noble Lord for his explanation. I did not have that briefing. The matter is quite significant and I hope it might be addressed.

I will say a few words about the pet travel scheme and one or two other things. I understand that additional rabies controls will be required for the movement of domestic pets, particularly dogs. There will not only be vaccination but post-vaccination blood testing for dogs leaving this country to confirm satisfactory antibody responses. Can the Minister confirm that this will apply to all imported dogs coming to Britain, including those originating in the EU 27 and coming to the UK for the first time, as well as travelling dogs leaving here and going to continental Europe for short periods? In other words, is there reciprocity in that respect?

Also, can the Minister confirm that travelling dogs will require a veterinary health check and an export health certificate before travel? That would impose cost burdens on the owners and substantial workforce burdens. If travelling dogs require export health certificates, are Her Majesty’s Government satisfied that there are sufficient designated official veterinarians based in small animal practices to carry this out with hundreds of thousands of dogs potentially moving out of and back to Britain? There are currently a number of countries outwith the EU included in the pet travel scheme. What rabies measures will we require from those countries post-Brexit? Will dogs imported to the UK from those countries require vaccination and testing as required for movement between the UK and continental Europe?

There is one matter not included here—it is not fair to include it—but there are concerns about the importation of ticks and tick-borne disease. I urge that we take every opportunity to impose controls to minimise the risk of ticks being imported when dogs come back to Britain. I hope that Defra will consider and legislate for this at some stage in the future.

This SI refers to the non-commercial movement of dogs. What plans are there, if any, to transfer the regulations on commercial movement of dogs covered by the Balai directive? Will that be dealt with in a different SI?

I have a couple of small final points. Commission Decision 2001/812/EC refers to the expertise of personnel required at border inspection ports. Can the Minister assure us that there will be no change at all in the level of expertise—the numbers as well as the quality—of personnel required at border inspection posts?

Lastly, there are several references in the SI to the “EU Exit Day 1” project, which will affect movements of dogs, which is being worked on by Defra. Can the Minister outline what that project will address?

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, given the plethora of issues raised by colleagues around the Committee, I am just going to focus on one additional matter that has not been raised either here or in the Commons. It relates to the welcome introduction from the Minister, who made it clear that this is a technical statutory instrument; my disappointment is that it is not more substantial. My question, which I will expand on a bit, is: if the Government are really serious about banning circuses with wild animals, why did they not take the opportunity in this statutory instrument to ban the importation of circuses that do just that?

The Minister made it clear—and the EM made it absolutely clear—that we are not under any legal obligation to adhere to the EU rules for trade following exit. This is a unilateral decision. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee also made it clear that it hoped that this Committee would scrutinise the department’s choice of unilateral recognition of current import arrangements. As other Members have made clear, our own animals may not be able to be exported if we are not accepted as a third country, and even if we are accepted as a third country, it may take some time. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, has heard six months; newspapers at the weekend suggested nine months. There could be a considerable time lag and administrative burden on pet owners and commercial exporters of equines and dogs, and yet we are unilaterally saying that anybody who has a circus with wild animals can happily bring them in.

The Minister made clear in his opening remarks that this is all about making it easy for business to trade with the UK post Brexit. However, we know that circuses with wild animals are cruel. The majority of the population oppose them; in Defra’s own recent consultation on the matter, 95% of the consultees said they wanted them banned; and Scotland and Wales have banned such circuses. I appreciate that this statutory instrument is only about circuses with wild animals coming into the country, and to be fair, none has done so in the past few years. However, acts and trainers may move around, and resident UK circuses can bring them in. The somewhat inappropriately named Great British Circus brought in some elephants just a few years back. That is elephants, lions, tigers and bears cooped up in small mobile cages, travelling around Europe, coming with the consent of this SI to the UK.

The Secretary of State, Michael Gove, has said that he will ban circuses with wild animals:

“as soon as parliamentary time allows”.

My question, therefore, is: why was this SI not looked at as a possible vehicle? On page 19, Regulation 18 sets out quite clearly the conditions that have to be met by circuses bringing animals into the United Kingdom. Paragraph 3(b), which Regulation 18 inserts into Article 4 of the EU regulation, requires:

“a register of animals in the circus in accordance with the model laid down in Annex I”.

I have looked at Annex I, which is a one-page document, and in box 2.4 you have to identify the “Species” that you are bringing in. I am no lawyer, but a little asterisk about not allowing wild animals might have been something that the Government could at least have thought about.

The Minister will say, I suspect, that any such amendment goes beyond what is required to maintain the operation of the law after EU exit. However, the Government have made changes in other statutory instruments. The Chemicals (Health and Safety) and Genetically Modified Organisms (Contained Use) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 proposed removing,

“unnecessary legal burdens on industry”.

So, we can take out burdens on industry but we cannot protect animal welfare. Will the Minister tell us whether Defra discussed the potential for using this statutory instrument to halt the importation of circuses with wild animals? Specifically, did it take any legal advice before it laid the instrument to achieve just that?

Unless there are overwhelming legal reasons why this has not happened, we will be forced to believe that, when the Government have to choose between supporting trade and supporting animal welfare, we know where they will go. It gives us little confidence that, in future deals, animal welfare, which we all hold so dear, will be upheld.

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

Debate between Baroness Parminter and Lord Trees

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, for bringing forward this Motion to Regret. Most people would agree that these regulations improve the previous slaughter provisions but would share the strong concerns the noble Lord indicated about the potential impacts on the welfare of poultry of not including the stunning parameters when using electrical water-bath stunners for religious slaughter.

The aim must as far as possible be to deliver humane stunning of poultry, subject to the constraints, some of which the noble Lord outlined, of using electrical water-bath stunners, in a manner acceptable to the relevant religious authorities reliably and consistently to provide a recoverable stun. Using electrical water-bath stunners without stun parameters risks some birds being immobilised rather than stunned and being conscious when they move to the neck-cutting stage required by halal slaughter.

As the noble Lord made quite clear, stun parameters in these circumstances have been set in Wales and Northern Ireland, following work by the European Food Safety Authority. Indeed, that raises questions about how operators who have businesses in various parts of our nation will have a comparable standard. When these proposals were hastily withdrawn, some specific wording was outlined in the Explanatory Memorandum:

“After making the 2014 WATOK Regulations, the Government decided that the potential impact on some limited aspects of religious slaughter needed further consideration and that it was preferable to revoke the 2014 WATOK Regulations in order to give full consideration to the relevant issues”.

I have read the Explanatory Memorandum and the various impact assessments that the department has provided, but at no stage does the EM or the IA spell out clearly what those issues were or what was the process of consideration by the Government. I think this House would demand that Defra operates evidence-based decision-making. I have found nowhere in the EM or the IA any indication of what specifically were the relevant issues or what was the process of their consideration that led to the removal of those regulations. What evidence are the Government using for removing these stun parameters? It is difficult to see that we can effectively stun all poultry without having set parameters.

The second issue I shall raise is the need for lessons to be learnt from the Government’s handling of this process. In its 11th report, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee highlighted the,

“inadequacies in Defra’s handling of consultation”,

and, using what I believe is rather strong language, called the process of policy formulation,

“protracted, uncertain and still unresolved”.

It chided the Government for having regulations still not in force three years later than the date set for implementation.

If the Minister is not going to agree to the recommendation made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, to re-lay the regulations including stunning parameters, will he say something about the internal review of the application of the regulations which is referred to in the Explanatory Memorandum? It makes clear that the Government intend to review this process within five years, but that it will be an internal review. I suggest that, given the concerns raised in this House and by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, any further review of these regulations should not be internal but should be public so that there can be full scrutiny of the impact of these regulations.

[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.