Pig Farming

James Paice Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

I too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr Bayley. I genuinely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon). During his time here, he has been a stalwart supporter of the pig industry, and I am sure that that is not because of his name. His Bill, to which I shall return, is being presented to the House for the fourth time, which shows his determination. I have attended innumerable breakfast and other meetings that he has hosted on the pig industry, and it is fortunate to have someone who is so determined to support it and the pig producers in his constituency.

On one occasion, most of the Suffolk and Norfolk MPs were in the Chamber, which demonstrated not just the importance of the concentration of the pig industry in those two counties—[Interruption.] My colleagues from east Yorkshire also joined us. Those are the main pig producing parts of the UK, and the fact that so many hon. Members decided to attend demonstrates the importance of the pig industry to them, and it reflects the lobbying that has taken place. As a former pig producer in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), I entirely understand its importance.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk rightly said, the industry is vital. He said that its total value is £8.7 billion, which is a significant sum in the retail sector. Others hon. Members have referred to the collapse of the pig herd since the mid-1990s. It is impossible to say precisely how much of that is attributable to the unilateral ban on stalls and tethers that we introduced, but it is obviously a significant part.

One of the changes over 20, 30 or 40 years has been rationalisation into specialist pig units. Years ago, pigs were one unit on a generalised farm, and a rise in grain prices had less impact, because farmers were feeding their own grain to their pigs, so they lost on one side and gained on the other. Now, more and more farmers are specialist pig producers, and must buy all their feed, so they can only lose from rising grain prices.

I shall try to address some of the issues that have arisen during the debate. My hon. Friends will be aware that there has always been pig a cycle. Pigs have a relatively short gestation and growth period, so the rise or fall in supply is a reasonably short-term phenomenon. They were always muck or money as supply and demand fluctuated slightly, but the level of fluctuation has become much worse, and the £20 a pig loss to which several of my hon. Friends referred reveals a dramatic downside of the cycle. It is unfortunate that the cycle was already beginning to drop off when feed prices were hiked up because of the grain price. That exacerbated the problem, but we are there, and the situation is horrendous.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk referred to some of the costs that our producers incur. Stalls and tethers were first phased out in the early 1990s, and were banned completely by 1999. Tethers were banned in the rest of Europe in 2006, and stalls will be banned by 2013, although, as my hon. Friend correctly pointed out, it will be permissible to keep sows in stalls for up to four weeks after service, and that brings me to the question asked by the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain). I assure him that the Government are absolutely opposed to any extension or derogation. As with battery cages for chickens, countries have known for a long time that the change was coming, and farmers have no excuse for not making the transition.

The hon. Gentleman asked me quite rightly about enforcement, and the fact that farmers will be allowed to have stalls on their farm in which to keep sows for four weeks will create a big challenge. Responsibility for enforcement will rest with the competent authority—usually the Department of Agriculture in member states—and I recognise the issue. We must keep pressing the Commission to ensure proper enforcement, because that is a worrying loophole.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will my right hon. Friend say whether the Government have consistently made the case that there should be no derogation after 2013, and whether he has any idea of when the Commission might publish details on enforcement? The earlier we see the proposed enforcement mechanisms, the more we will be able to influence them before they are introduced, when they will be harder to change.

[Mr Paice]

The answer to the first part of my hon. Friend’s question is that we constantly tell the Commission that when a rule is introduced, every country should comply with it, and that there should be no derogations. He is right in saying that we have not seen any proposals for enforcement, and I am not aware that we have seen any assessment of what stage other countries are at. There were efforts to do that with conventional battery cages, but there were difficulties. The matter is important, and I will chase it up to see whether there has been any assessment of what other countries have done. To be fair, we know that many countries with a significant number of pig farmers, such as Denmark, which is a major pig producing country, have converted, but I cannot tell my hon. Friend precisely what the proportions are and how many remain to convert.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North East challenged me on whether we would support an intra-EU ban on those countries that have not introduced the measure. I shall be completely honest, as I always try to be. We have not considered that yet, but he makes a valid point. I made the point about eggs, and there is no logical reason why we should not do the same for pigmeat. However, we want everyone to convert, and until we see some sort of assessment, we cannot speculate too much, but I entirely accept the hon. Gentleman’s point.

I have just been passed a note saying that no official information is available about how far EU countries have moved towards complying with the directive. Denmark and the Netherlands have said that they will comply, but the situation in some other countries is different and vaguer. There are different rules on castration and tail-docking in different countries, and there is a competitiveness issue. Some hon. Members referred to supermarket specifications and, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk said, claims by Tesco and others about their supply sources. It is reasonable and acceptable, of course, for retailers to ensure that their supply chains comply with British standards, and it is not in the Government’s gift to check whether they do. There is no doubt that tail-docking and castration rules are different in other countries, and it is only right and proper that they should insist on the same standards. I shall return to the supermarket issue.

That leads me to my last point on welfare. My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) referred to pigs being kept outdoors. Anyone who drives through Suffolk and South Norfolk will see that tens of thousands of sows are kept outdoors, even through the recent winter and the snow before Christmas. There is no doubt that keeping pigs outdoors is more expensive in production costs. Productivity is lower, there are not so many pigs a year from the sows, and growth rates are slightly affected. Those systems are being adopted because the drive for better welfare from retailers has pushed them that way, but higher management standards are required and farmers do not receive the price for their pigs that that higher standard demands.

I was with a group of Agriculture Ministers in Belgium before Christmas, and we were taken to a modern, highly efficient Belgian pig farm operated in totally enclosed buildings, where the hygiene must have been incredible, as there was no disease. Nevertheless, there were just spartan, bare shelves with a few rubber balls hanging on chains for the pigs to play with. Those pigs compete with our pigs, which are reared outdoors. Apparently, British consumers prefer pigs that have been reared outdoors, but they are not always told about it.

My hon. Friends referred to the overall issue of supply, and to dioxins, which was a problem from Germany that we had in January. The Commission introduced a private purchase scheme for a short space of time, and some pigmeat was taken off the market, which helped for a while. What concerned me was the allegation—I say only that—that certain supermarkets were dropping their British suppliers because the European mainland market was awash with cheap pigmeat as a result of the dioxin scare. To me, that undermines the claims made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk about supermarkets looking after our sector.

[Mr Bacon]

As the Minister said, it is not in the Government’s gift to check whether claims made by supermarkets about animal welfare standards are adhered to by overseas producers whose products the supermarkets import. Even if the Government cannot do that, however, does the Minister agree that there is an interest on the part of consumers and of Government in knowing whether such claims are true?

[Mr Paice]

My hon. Friend is right and we stand four-square behind the assertion that it is important that the consumer be properly informed about what is available for sale. There should be an effective traceability chain that can verify the claims made on the label.

At this point, I should probably discuss the issue of labelling. I welcome my hon. Friend’s Bill, but he knows as well as I do that there are question marks—to say the least—about the legality of the UK legislating alone on food labelling. There is good news, however, and since we came to office, two things have happened. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East made a point about the pigmeat supply chain taskforce and the code agreed with the industry. That happened before we took office, and I am the first to recognise that. Since we took office, a bigger agreement on all meat has taken place between the supermarkets, the meat trade, the catering and hospitality trades and the producers, resulting in a much broader voluntary code of practice concerning country of origin labelling. That is the key issue. That code is now in place, and we are currently doing an evaluation exercise to baseline it so that we can measure progress in the future.

Alongside that, there are negotiations on the EU food information regulation. Since taking office, we have toughened up the UK’s approach to support the idea of mandatory labelling for meat and meat products, and that is what the regulation currently requires. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk says, there is a long way to go and I do not want to forecast the outcome. At the moment, however, the food information regulation would achieve what he seeks with his Bill, except that it would apply not only in the UK but across the EU. That is the best way forward, and potentially that is encouraging news.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) asked about regional labels. There is nothing to stop anybody from marketing and using regional labels, and we strongly support protected name indicators—PNIs—in principle. The two examples I give will not make or break the pig industry, but Gloucester Old Spot pigmeat, and more recently Cumberland sausages, both in the pigmeat world, have been approved for that status. PNIs are a marketing tool, but like any other form of marketing they are effective only if the labelling is honest about the country of origin where the pig was born, reared and slaughtered. That is the point about labelling espoused by my hon. Friend.

[Mr Bacon]

Does the Minister agree that the most important thing about labelling, including mandatory labelling, is to stamp on the canard that giving full, accurate information to consumers somehow distorts the market, because consumers might act on that information? The only possible consequence of accurate food labelling is to assist the clear operation of market preferences.

[Mr Paice]

I entirely agree. We are constantly told by retailers, “We are doing what the consumer demands.” Well, let the consumer demand, but make sure that they are properly informed so that we know that the demand is genuine. There is no reason for anybody, whether producer or retailer, to be afraid of the consumer, and we should not be afraid of consumers being properly informed.

I will touch on the two final issues raised by hon. Members. First, the coalition Government are committed to introducing Government buying standards, and we are on schedule to do so. Some parts of that relate to food but concern health, rather than the DEFRA rules on food, so I will concentrate on pigmeat. Our clear objective is that we should spend taxpayers’ money only on food that has been produced to British standards, as long as it does not cost any more—there are plenty of examples and pieces of casework to demonstrate that it will not cost more. That is only right and fair, and it means using farm assurance schemes as benchmarks to ensure that it takes place. That objective is on schedule.

My final point, on which I have been challenged, concerns the adjudicator. That is the responsibility of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and it is clear that the Department is determined to go forward with it. I was asked about its role, and the adjudicator will investigate complaints from anyone in the supply chain who has been affected, either directly or indirectly, by what they believe to be a breach of the code. Furthermore, the issue can be dealt with anonymously. Those are the two big issues that we will see when the legislation is published.

Finally, let me turn to the wider issue of supermarkets. I must resist the temptation to identify individual supermarkets and say what each is doing, because I do not have full knowledge of that. Morrisons is distinct, because it has its own abattoirs, unlike any other supermarket. That is why it buys pigs from the farmer as opposed to from a processer, as other supermarkets do. Usually, however, supermarkets are closely involved in sourcing their meat.

I entirely share the general thrust of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, and those of everybody else who has spoken. If supermarkets and retailers believe that future consumers will want to buy British pigmeat, they have a responsibility to ensure the supply of British pigmeat for the future, and that lies behind the adjudicator and the code. The Competition Commission’s conclusions were not about farmers but about consumers. It was concerned that retailers were shifting too much risk on to the supply side, and that in future the consumer might lose because the supply side was constrained. Therefore, it is in the interests of the consumer to ensure a supply of British pigmeat for the future. I share the view held by my hon. Friends that although no one pretends that there is a single solution to the challenges we face, supermarkets have a big role to play. To be fair, it is not only Morrisons that takes the more responsible line to which my hon. Friend referred.

I am grateful for the compliments that I have received from hon. Friends about my feelings on this matter, but that is not really important. What matters is what the Government do, and we have made a pledge on the adjudicator and are making dramatic progress on the labelling front and on Government buying standards. We have dealt with the issue of potential GM contamination of imports, and we are determined to do everything we can in an industry that, as others have said, is unsubsidised and vitally important. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate.