Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board (Amendment) Order 2020

Lord Bhatia Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl) [V]]

This SI has been prepared by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It amends the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board Order 2008 to assign additional functions to that board. These functions relate to collecting, managing and making available information regarding the identification, movement and health of animals and allocating unique identification codes to the means of identifying animals. This would provide a multi-species traceability system in England and facilitate the tracing of livestock movements across the UK.

The department has established a subsidiary company named Livestock Information Ltd. This company will be accountable to Defra. The company will provide services to six agricultural and horticultural sectors, including the beef, sheep and pig industries in England and the milk industry in Great Britain. Of the 165,000 people who farm livestock today, only 60,000 keep more than one species. The nature of this industry is such that the livestock move across the UK, and this service will provide a unique number for each animal, which will ensure disease management.

Food standards are extremely important, and this regulation will ensure that food quality is monitored on an ongoing basis. There has been a press report recently which said that science has now produced a man-made product that does not require animals, thereby having an impact on this industry. Can the Minister give some information on whether the department is making an impact assessment of this new product, as it is likely to affect the whole industry, thereby making thousands of people redundant?