Farm Animal Welfare

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his involvement with that Act. He challenged me and the House to become more knowledgeable during our debates on it. We think that the Act will have huge benefits for animal welfare; I have two examples for the noble Lord. The Roslin Institute and Genus have developed gene-edited versions of pigs, which could improve the situation with regard to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, a terrible disease of that animal. The other example is pancreatic necrosis virus in salmon. We want to make sure that we are regulating this properly; we talked about that throughout debates on the Act. We now have a system in which there is transparency about how we regulate that, but I will continue to keep the House informed as we develop that.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, can the Minister clarify exactly when the ban on live animals for slaughter being exported is coming in? Is it not a fact that, when and if it does, it could not apply to Northern Ireland because Northern Ireland has been under EU rules on live animals for slaughter?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The number of live animals exported from Great Britain since Brexit has been zero—none: not one. There is one vessel, the “Joline”, which operates out of Folkestone and has the capacity to take live exports from Great Britain to Europe, and there is none going on that vessel at the moment. We still want to bring in this legislation, because there may be future demand, the infrastructure to support that trade might start up again and we want to make sure we are legislating in the right way. On the key point about Northern Ireland, that is an even more complex issue, because we are trying to resolve this through the Windsor Framework, but I will write to the noble Baroness on that.