Farmed Animals: Cages

Bill Wiggin Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Sir Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am quite concerned about what is going on here today. I do not think anybody wants to defend sow stalls or enriched cages, but we need considerably more detail and honesty. The 16 million “animals” that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) referred to are all chickens—well, there are 200,000 pigs—so realistically, this is not exactly about “animals”; the petitioners could have put “birds”.

We saw one of the most infuriating attacks on poultry during the avian influenza outbreak: all free-range chickens were put inside, and no free-range eggs were available in our shops. There was not one campaign about that appalling treatment of poultry. It is entirely understandable why the Government insisted on locking up our chickens, but there was a real welfare issue and we heard not a squeak.

The same applies to all the other things we are dealing with here. My hon. Friend made a lovely speech, but 180,000 extra piglets will die if those crates are not used. That may be acceptable, but it is part of the story. The real problem is that unless the farmer can make a decent living—unless agriculture is profitable—he cannot undergo those kinds of losses, yet that is what we want.

We need to be much more honest about this issue. When we go to Tesco and see bacon from Brookfield Farm, it is coming from Denmark; it is not British-produced. When we get a letter about game birds, we should be aware that most of the game birds released in this country are bred in France. Because of the avian influenza over there, there has been a massive shortage of eggs and chicks. That is because the French reacted differently.

A lot of this animal welfare debate needs to be focused on truth and accuracy, and on the points my hon. Friends made earlier about what we import. We cannot expect to have better animal welfare if we do not honestly and accurately tell the truth about it to each other.

[Sir Roger Gale]

I have listened with wry amusement to my hon. Friend, who I think I am right in saying is a Brexiteer. One of the advantages—some might argue the only advantage—of leaving the European Union was that we were going to be able to exercise control over what came into the United Kingdom. I argued vociferously for a long time that we should not disadvantage our own farming community by putting up costs in a way that prevented them from making a living in competition with, for example, Denmark on pigs. Now that we have left the European Union, we have the power to say that we will not allow into the United Kingdom a product that has been produced under circumstances that we would not permit here. That is what we are asking for. I hope that my hon. Friend understands that.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

How could I not understand? My right hon. Friend was crystal clear. However, I am not sure it is quite as straightforward as we would like. He will be aware that people in dinghies are coming into his constituency. We have not quite got the hang of border control yet, but I hope that we will in due course.

In respect of this debate, there are wider problems. The biggest problem for pig farmers is the foot and mouth outbreak we suffered in 2001. The best thing to do with pigs is feed them waste food. Until we can get back to doing that, it will always be difficult for our pig farmers to make a margin, but I agree with my right hon. Friend that it would be wonderful if we could stop other people doing horrible things to animals. Unfortunately, he also supports the ban on foxhunting, which led to the complete eradication of my chickens. There are balances to be had in the countryside, and we need honesty in this debate.

The more accurate we can be, the better. For example, 55% of UK egg production is free range. It is only 9.1% in Spain and 4.9% in Italy, so we are actually doing an extremely good job in this country. We should be supporting our farmers rather than criticising them, particularly for things that are going on abroad.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food (Victoria Prentis)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I, too, thank the Petitions Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers), and all the people who signed the petition and enabled us to debate this important subject.

I agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) that these are not easy issues to resolve. I think everybody in this room shares the goal of working to improve animal welfare, but we also live in a world where we are conscious that such improvements may increase the price of production of our food. I am committed, as are the Government, to working with producers and the food sector to raise standards across the board, and it is important that we set my remarks in that context.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South introduced the debate very well by emphasising that we need to work with, not against, the farming industry. I hope that my remarks will give him some reassurance on that. My hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Sir Bill Wiggin) called for honesty in the debate, which is critical. Many of us do not really know what we are eating or where it comes from, and nobody could have lobbied me more heavily than he did on behalf of chickens during the winter. There is nothing about his now sadly demised flock of chickens that I do not know, and I am sorry that they spent their final winter housed because of avian influenza.

I reassure my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) that improved animal health and welfare is integrated into all our farming schemes. There is very good news—I would be delighted to discuss it with her in greater detail—on the vet visits that are being rolled out next year, which will specifically target cattle, sheep and pigs. Those will be a good way to provide farmers and vets with a safe space to have a discussion that is not reported to me or the Department afterwards, and they will lead to some really sensible and long-term improvements in the health of the national flock.

I reassure the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) that animal welfare is right up the agenda when it comes to forging trade deals. I think everyone in this Chamber is of one mind that animal welfare is important and needs to be improved. Most of us are also aware that this is an extremely challenging time for Britain’s farmers, with enormously increased input costs—of food, fuel and fertiliser—affecting almost all production systems to a greater or lesser extent.

The UK has a strong record of banning battery cages for laying hens, sow stalls for pigs and veal crates for calves. What have the Government been doing in recent years? The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 was given Royal Assent in April, and provides legal recognition that animals are sentient, and that general Government decision making should continue to reflect that sentience. The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act 2021 increased the maximum sentence for the worst animal cruelty offences from six months to five years in England and Wales. The Animals (Penalty Notices) Act 2022 will, I hope, support transparent enforcement and encourage good behaviours in husbandry generally.

I reassure everyone here that the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill remains a priority for the Government. As soon as the business managers can find us time in a busy parliamentary schedule, we expect a date on which we will debate the Bill on Report. That Bill will, alongside other measures, deal with the issue of excessively long journeys for slaughter and fattening. As I have discussed with Members in the Chamber whose names I will not mention for fear of giving their age away, many of us have been committed to campaigning to end animal exports since we watched those pictures on “Blue Peter” as children.

I am pleased to say that moving away from cages is the direction of travel for the egg industry, so 60% of our hens are now kept in free-range systems. Supermarkets are playing their part, with the major supermarkets pledging to stop selling eggs from the remaining 40% of hens in colony cages by 2025. Some supermarkets and other retailers have gone further to extend that pledge to include processed products; that is to be welcomed.

So what is the plan? We are almost ready to go with a consultation on the caging of laying hens, but we must recognise that the transition must be done with, rather than against, the industry. As we move away from cages, we need to continue to work with the industry on improving feather cover and keel bone health, and reducing the amount of beak trimming that is done. The challenges for the sector in recent times—covid, staffing and, of course, the largest ever avian influenza outbreak—have been significant, but we will continue to take steps forward.

Broiler chickens perhaps do not fall quite so neatly into this debate, but they comprise a significant proportion of the animals reared in this country, so it is important to recognise that almost all of them—nearly 95%—are reared in barns, in confinement. Although we have better stocking densities than much of the EU, there is a great deal more to do in this area, some of which I will set out later.

As the hon. Member for Cambridge acknowledged, it has been an extremely difficult year for pig farmers. When we look at welfare in global pig systems, some 40% of our pigs are kept outdoors, so those sows have outdoor farrowing systems. The pig sector also gives us the clearest evidence of what happens when we ban a system without having a plan to help the industry through it. The ban on sow stalls 23 years ago led to a 40% decline in the UK’s pig production statistics, which, truthfully, we have never recovered from.

My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) put this point extremely clearly: we must not offshore our animal welfare harms, because that would do the pig world as a whole no good at all. There are difficulties—we are bound by World Trade Organisation rules, of course—but active work is being done to establish how, if we banned a system here, we could ban imports from that system. We are working hard on that, but these things are not easy.

[Sir Bill Wiggin]

It would be much easier if we had honesty in food labelling, because then at least as consumers we can make a choice.

[Victoria Prentis]

I will get to that point.

Our consultation on pig farrowing crates is not quite ready, particularly the impact assessment on costs, and this is an industry that has really struggled over the past year. The consultation is still being worked on and clearly further work is needed. I am very much in touch with the pig industry, as we come through what has been a very difficult period. We continue to work collectively to try to solve its problems. We are also in the middle of a serious supply chain review, looking at how contracts could be made to work better for the industry as a whole.

In order to raise standards, it is important that we have other tools at our disposal; it is not just about banning systems. I very much refute the allegation that no action has been taken over the past two years. It is important that we put this in context, because probably not since the last major period of rationing have a Government been so involved in ensuring that the food supply system remained operational, and that good-quality food was available on the shelves. I absolutely refute the suggestion that nothing has been done.

Our action plan for animal welfare was published in May last year, when we committed to working with the farming sector to support higher welfare conditions. The animal health and welfare pathway is being used to raise standards all the time, not just through banning things, but through a three-pronged attack. It states that financial rewards will be available for farmers who use higher welfare systems. It also sets out a plan for stimulating market demand—that is the labelling point—and, working hand in hand with that, for strengthening the regulatory baseline.

On pigs specifically, through the animal health and welfare pathway we will continue to improve biosecurity in order to control endemic diseases, and of course the vet visits will help in that area.

On meat chickens, through the pathway we are encouraging producers to implement the Better Chicken commitment, which requires the use of slower growing breeds and lower stocking densities. Only 5% of chickens are produced to higher standards. Frankly, we all need to interrogate where our meat comes from.

Labelling obviously plays an important part in enabling consumers to interrogate where our meat comes from, and we know that it works to stimulate market demand for higher welfare products, as we have seen with shell eggs. We have issued a call for evidence on animal welfare labelling, and last week affirmed our commitment to working on this issue in the food strategy. The food data transparency partnership will help, because the way we work with retailers is critical to changing their behaviours and forcing change from the consumer end up.

In conclusion, the Government are committed to phasing out confinement systems and supporting the industry to do so, not least to underpin UK food security. However, we need to work carefully and sensitively with the pig and poultry industries, which are both struggling with some difficult input costs and other challenges at the moment.