Mutilations (Permitted Procedures) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2010

Baroness Quin Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2010 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the draft regulations, which we hope will be agreed by the House later. The coalition Government are, as always, committed to improved standards of animal welfare. It certainly forms part of my own department, Defra’s, structural reform plan.

These regulations remove the ban on beak-trimming of laying hens which is due to come in on 1 January 2011, to allow for routine beak-trimming of day-old chicks intended for laying to be carried out using the infra-red technique only, with other methods restricted to emergency use only. I recognise that this issue has generated a lot of interest in another place. A Written Statement was provided to both Houses last month setting out the background behind these amending regulations, explaining the Government’s determination to work closely with the industry with the objective of making a ban on beak-trimming possible in 2016. That is a commitment that I made and that my honourable friend Mr Jim Paice made in a Written Statement some two months ago.

The current position is that the UK makes use of a derogation in the EU Council Directive 99/74/EC on the welfare of laying hens, which allows for beak-trimming of laying hens that are less than 10 days old if carried out by qualified staff. The procedure is only permitted to prevent feather-pecking and cannibalism, which is a common but unpredictable behaviour in commercial flocks of laying hens and a significant welfare issue. The Mutilations (Permitted Procedures) (England) Regulations 2007 implement this derogation but only allow routine beak-trimming to be carried out until 31 December 2010, after which beak-trimming of laying hens would be banned.

The ban was put in place when the laying hens directive was implemented in the UK in 2002, allowing eight years to develop a strategy to manage birds without the need to beak-trim. The Beak Trimming Action Group—comprising representatives from industry, welfare groups, Defra, scientific and veterinary professions—was established to develop this strategy. However, progress in the control of injurious pecking in England has not been sufficient to implement a ban on beak-trimming without causing a significant risk to animal welfare. In the mean time, a new infra-red technique was developed and is now used to beak-trim birds commercially, as an alternative to hot-blading. Currently, the infra-red technique is used on 95 per cent of all beak-trimmed laying hens.

The Farm Animal Welfare Council reviewed the evidence in 2007 and 2009 and recommended that the ban on beak-trimming should be deferred until it can be demonstrated reliably under commercial conditions that laying hens can be managed without beak-trimming, without a greater risk to their welfare than that caused by beak-trimming itself. The FAWC recommended that infra-red beak treatment should be the only method used routinely, as the evidence indicated that it does not induce chronic pain.

The Government’s long-term goal is to ban routine beak-trimming, but FAWC’s advice represents a sensible and pragmatic approach in the circumstances. A ban on beak-trimming for laying hens at this time would result in significant welfare problems through outbreaks of feather-pecking and cannibalism. It is therefore right that the legislation needs to be amended to remove the impending ban, which would otherwise come into force on 1 January 2011.

The Government see the proposed removal of the ban very much as an interim solution. The previous Government’s consultation on proposals to amend the legislation did not propose any dates to review the policy or for a future ban. This Government have taken heed of the strength of feeling on this issue and decided to adopt the Farm Animal Welfare Council’s recommendation of setting a review date of 2015. We will assess the output of this work, with the objective of banning routine beak-trimming in 2016. The Beak Trimming Action Group will be reconvened; its first meeting has been arranged for January. We are committed to working with the group to find solutions to this very complex issue. The group will establish an action plan to include the key milestones which were laid out in the Written Statement, leading up to a full review of beak-trimming in 2015.

The review will consider results of ongoing research projects that are investigating practical and realistic ways to rear laying hens without the need for beak- trimming. Bristol University, for example, funded by the Tubney Charitable Trust, is carrying out a three-year intervention study. It is developing a trialling and advisory package to help producers reduce the risk of injurious pecking through changes to housing and husbandry. All the key stakeholder groups are on the steering group for this project, with representatives from industry, welfare organisations, researchers, economists and Defra. The Beak Trimming Action Group will begin to consider the outputs from this study next summer.

We recognise that any future strategy will have to identify the lessons that can be learnt from those countries that already have a ban in place or just do not beak-trim, such as Austria, Sweden and Switzerland, so we have asked the industry to undertake some study tours to such countries. Feather-pecking is greatest in systems of management which do not house birds in cages. Therefore, the risk to the welfare of laying hens from injurious pecking is likely to increase after the ban on conventional cages comes into force on 1 January 2012. A review in 2015 will allow producers time to increase their experience of managing flocks in alternative systems.

The review in 2015 will assess the achievements on eliminating beak-trimming to date and advise whether a ban on routine beak-trimming of laying hens will achieve the maximum welfare outcome, which is what we desire, with a view to reinstating the ban in 2016. These regulations will improve existing welfare standards for laying hens in the short term while we work hard to find a lasting solution, which will bring an end to the need for routine beak-trimming. They also complete the implementation of Council Directive 2007/43/EC by implementing the mutilations provisions for meat chickens and I commend them to the Committee.

[Baroness Quin]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining the instrument. We fully support the aim of ending beak-trimming and the general desire across government to do so. As the Minister explained, without this instrument the ban would legally have come into force although, given the difficulties, I imagine that even had there not been a change of Government we would have been in a similar situation, particularly given the responses to the consultation that the previous Government held earlier this year. There is the difficult equation of balancing a possible deterioration in animal welfare standards by not continuing with the derogation and the concern that changing the system at this point could have meant that we would have had extra imports coming in from countries with lower welfare standards. I can therefore see some of the difficulties that were involved in calculating how to take this issue forward for the future and, for that reason, I understand the action that the Government are proposing in these regulations.

As the Minister said, however, there is considerable public and parliamentary interest in this issue. That is not surprising because there is a strong degree of commitment to animal welfare among the public and in Parliament and to seeing increased animal welfare standards for the future. Certainly, that concern was reflected in an Early Day Motion in the other House, which was proposed by a Conservative but endorsed by Members from many parties, particularly my own. Their desire is that beak-trimming should be brought to an end as soon as practicable. Indeed, that underlines the idea of creating some kind of deadline for this to happen, which the Government have done in deciding on the review period and the ban date as the Minister outlined to us.

Obviously, 2016 is some time off. I am not trying to make a party-political point because I know that the process has already been a long one. None the less, if there are any other ways of trying to shorten the timetable I would certainly encourage the Government look at them. One aspect of the work that needs to be undertaken between now and then is the study tour of EU and other European countries that do not have beak- trimming. I would have thought that that work could start soon and I understand that it will be proceeded with expeditiously. I understand what the Minister said about the three-year research project. That obviously takes us to some time in the future. However, having said that, I certainly hope that at the very least the timetable that has been set out can be adhered to.

I do not know whether the Government considered putting the deadlines in the regulations, but I hope that it will be made very clear that this is the deadline to which the Government are working. It would not be good for a signal to be sent out that nothing much will be happening immediately so therefore people do not need to worry about it. That has been a problem in the past and we do not want it to be a problem in the future.

On another issue, I strongly support what the Minister said in terms of favouring the infra-red method as opposed to the hot-blade method. As he said, 95 per cent of production is subject to the infra-red method. However, the regulations say that in the case of a sudden outbreak, it would be possible to use the hot-blade procedure. I understand from the debate that took place in the other House that such emergencies have not occurred recently. None the less, I note that the British Veterinary Association, in its response to the Government, is concerned that the regulations could be interpreted as allowing the arbitrary use of hot-blade beak-trimming after 10 days to control moderate or even minor outbreaks of injurious pecking. The association felt that in order to counteract that, the term “emergency” should be more clearly defined. Has consideration been given to that as a way forward? Or is it that, as was described in the other House, the concerns of the British Veterinary Association are not causing too much worry to the Government at present because this procedure is not really being used at the moment?

The regulations state that holdings with fewer than 350 birds are exempt from the regulations. I would like to ask the Minister a little more about that. Why should not the infra-red technique be prescribed for those holdings as well? I do not know whether there is routing beak-trimming in holdings with fewer than 350 birdsI note that in the debate in the other place the Minister said that such holdings would in any case be covered under the Animal Welfare Act, which was passed by the previous Government with all-party support. If the provisions in that Act were sufficient, why would these regulations be necessary? I am not quite sure why the older Act is sufficient in the case of holdings with fewer than 350 birds but not for holdings with more than 350 birds. The very helpful Explanatory Memorandum says that there are 1,323 holdings housing more than 350 laying hens. Does the Minister have any statistics for how many holdings have fewer than 350 birds? I could not see that information in the Explanatory Memorandum. If it is there, I apologise for having missed it.