Cattle Compensation (England) (Amendment) Order 2018

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 General Committees

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

It is very nice to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard.

Preventing cattle from being brought into herds in which there is an infection that has not been cleared up is an excellent change to the rules, but I am really disturbed by and concerned about proposed new paragraph 5A of the schedule to the Cattle Compensation (England) Order 2012, which relates to compensation payable when

“an animal is presented for slaughter for reasons of tuberculosis, and…the official veterinarian at the slaughter house is of the opinion that the animal is not in a clean condition”.

I must declare an interest as an owner of cattle, as well as drawing the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am bothered by proposed new paragraph 5A because my cattle do not like being tested for TB. They get jabbed in the neck twice, and three days later the vet comes back to feel the bumps. The cows do not know what is going on or whether to expect another jab in the neck. They find the whole thing upsetting, and for a few days afterwards they are very jumpy. These are Herefords, which are the most calm, gentle and wonderful cattle—the world’s No. 1 beef breed.

That is enough plugging. Bearing in mind the pressure on abattoirs, the costs that vets incur and the pressure to make money all the time, there is an inherent temptation for vets to say that cows are dirtier than they would if there were no financial consequences. Equally, cattle cannot be clipped after they have been tested, because it is desperately dangerous. They are not happy animals, and they have four hooves that will smash your head in without meaning to. There is a genuine risk to human health if we not only insist that people have their cattle taken away against their will and with great sacrifice to their business plans when they face the misery that TB inflicts, but then say, “By the way, you’d better make sure they’re clean enough, or the abattoir will dock 50% of your compensation.” That is asking for trouble.

I am led to believe by the Government that at the moment only 20 cattle a year are deemed to be too filthy to be worth killing. However, I think the Government need to do considerably more to put my mind at rest that we are not voting in support of a change in the rules that will cause good farmers who are a bit worried to clip cattle, either before or after TB testing. We need to ensure that this is proportionate. For 20 cows a year, we are talking about £100,000 of compensation. That is not enough to risk one life; no amount of money is worth that. A terrible mistake is being made.

We need to find a different way to ensure that people give their cattle a level of care and welfare that keeps them clean. The suggestion made by the Opposition spokesman was a good one: the abattoir should receive a payment from the farmer to ensure that the animal is in a clean enough condition to be killed. If the vets are going to condemn an animal, they should have to photograph it. I would like to see some sort of appeal process so that when the system starts to proliferate, which it inevitably will, we can say to the Minister, “This is what we did today. What a mistake we made—perhaps we can revisit it.”

I would like to hear good things from the Minister about protecting farmers’ health and safety when they are going through the most traumatic and miserable thing that can happen on a farm in the course of normal business. I have been keeping cattle for quite a long time. There is not just one test a year; there are pre-movement tests as well. TB tests are not fun. My children dread them because they have to help, and we all get hurt—it is not all right. Farmers must do those kinds of things to fight this ghastly risk to human health.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

All I can say is that APHA does run certain programmes for that and picks up the animals as soon as it can. It usually happens within days; sometimes it can take a week.

I return to my initial point: typically, once an animal has become a reactor and tested positive to the disease, the farmer will keep it in isolation in a shed somewhere. Is it really too much to ask that farmers ensure there is full straw bedding in that shed for the week or so that it takes for the animal to be collected? My view is that it is not.

[Bill Wiggin]

I suspect it is because the Minister has such a kind heart that he is worried about the care shown to these poor condemned animals. However, it is an offence, which is properly legislated for, not to look after animals properly. The draft order is no substitute for proper animal welfare—it is misguided in that respect. Proper legislation is already in place. Will he think again about how he will handle the increased complaints that will inevitably follow when abattoirs work out that vets are under pressure to condemn more and more stock?

[George Eustice]

Vets have a very objective approach to condemning unclean animals. They do that already, whether it is for TB compensation or for commercial animals. It is worth noting that if a farmer sent a steer to an abattoir to be slaughtered for food consumption in the normal way and it was condemned as too unclean even to process, he would get no payment for that animal. Under this scheme, he would get 50% compensation.

It is important also to recognise that when an animal is condemned, it has no salvage value to the Government. At the moment, we pay full compensation to farmers for the value of their animals, and we try to recoup some of that cost through those animals’ salvage value. Where animals are condemned, there is no salvage value.

[Bill Wiggin]

I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but the wording of the draft order is not “the meat is condemned” but

“the animal is not in a clean condition”.

That is why I think he is wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[George Eustice]

The CHeCS scheme is a United Kingdom Accreditation Service-accredited scheme that certifies that farmers are adopting proactive measures to improve their biosecurity. That could include, where necessary, putting additional fencing and protection on yards to stop badgers getting into contact with animals. It can involve adopting a particular risk-based approach to the way they trade. It can also involve investment in special drinking troughs so that badgers cannot get access to them, and so on and so forth.

I often hear from the hon. Gentleman and the Labour party that we should not be doing a badger cull and that we should be doing biosecurity, vaccination and other things. My answer is that we need to do all of those things. In the two areas where we first started the badger cull, we have seen a 50% reduction in the incidence of the disease, but that is not enough on its own. We also have to improve biosecurity and we have to continually refine our cattle movement controls. If the Opposition are serious about this, they must recognise that we must take biosecurity seriously too. That is what we are seeking to do.

[Bill Wiggin]

I am using this opportunity to check on the CHeCS. The Scottish Agricultural College does not appear on the CHeCS website, yet I believe it is a CHeCS-accredited scheme. The Department needs to have a little look at exactly how the scheme is working. I have been CHeCS-accredited from the beginning, and the tuberculosis bit does not really work. I hope that the Minister will have a little look at that. Could he also ensure that the 20 cattle that are condemned every year are photographed?

[George Eustice]

On the latter point, yes. I will ensure that that instruction is given to the OVs. I suspect that they would probably do that anyway for their own internal procedures.

On my hon. Friend’s first point, I do not think that is directly relevant to this set of regulations, but I am more than happy to have that discussion with him. The CHeCS system has worked well on other diseases, such as bovine viral diarrhoea. The TB version of it was launched in 2015 with the support of the National Farmers Union and others. It is something that we want to get behind and support.