Animal Welfare

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I am grateful for the work that my noble friend has done in this area. I think that noble Lords around the House share her horror, as do I, at the conditions in which these unfortunate animals travel. As I say, we are pressing the Commission to adopt the EFSA rules. I am not aware specifically of the position on the transport of animals between South America and Italy, and I will look into it.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, the Government’s record on animal welfare is now in tatters, given that they are not listening to science on badgers, are dragging their heels on animals in circuses and have made a shambolic U-turn on shooting buzzards. [Laughter.] We can see how seriously the party opposite takes animal welfare from its reaction to that. Given that more than a million people have signed the petition on the long-distance transport of horses for slaughter organised by Animal Angels and that MEPs now agree that the limit should be eight hours, is it the Government’s policy that the limit should be eight hours or the 12 hours that the Minister talked about?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, most animal welfare NGOs want an automatic eight-hour limit on all journeys for all livestock going to slaughter. The EFSA report did not recommend such an approach, recognising that different species can be transported over different periods of time without unnecessary suffering. Scientific research supports the argument that the quality of transport and the competence of the driver tend to be the major factors in the welfare of animals during transport and not necessarily the length of the journey time.