Oral Answers to Questions

John McNally Excerpts

Tuesday 19th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

As my hon. Friend has pointed out, there has been a long-standing legal provision for mandatory country of origin labelling on beef, in which, to claim that the country of origin is the UK, the animal must be born, reared and slaughtered in the UK. Those regulations on mandatory country of origin labelling were extended several years ago to cover all principal meat species. They do not yet extend to processed goods that might contain multiple goods, but there have been significant steps forward in broadening the scope of mandatory country of origin labelling.

[John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)]

What additional financial support he plans to provide to food producers to mitigate the effect of the covid-19 outbreak.

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

What additional financial support he plans to provide to food producers to mitigate the effect of the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

We are working closely with the agriculture and fishing industries to manage the negative impacts of covid-19. In addition to HM Treasury’s financial support packages, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has announced support schemes for the dairy and fishing industries, and we continue to monitor other sectors.

[John Mc Nally [V]]

Will DEFRA Ministers go further and insist with their counterparts in the Department for International Trade on high standards for animal welfare, phytosanitary and food production imports to protect our domestic food producers?

[George Eustice]

The Government are very clear—and it was set out in our manifesto—that we will not compromise on our high food and animal welfare standards as we approach trade agreements. Specifically, that means that the UK will determine its own domestic standards when it comes to the so-called SPS chapter—those sanitary and phytosanitary issues—relating in particular to food safety. Those will be set at a UK level and we will not abandon or change those standards in response to demands from other countries.