Farmed Animals: Cages

Justin Madders Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Pritchard. I thank the hon. Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) for his comprehensive introduction.

In advance of the debate, I was contacted by a number of constituents who expressed their disappointment that there was nothing in the Queen’s Speech about the sort of animal welfare reforms that will be the main part of our discussion today. They told me that, as we have heard, DEFRA’s action plan for animal welfare, published over a year ago, said that the Government are committed to issuing a consultation. We have heard that that will be on its way shortly, but the action plan also stated that

“we will introduce other reforms to improve farm welfare, including examining the use of cages for laying hens and farrowing crates for pigs.”

A year on, we are still waiting for that action.

Every year that passes without action means that millions more animals are kept in unnatural and often distressing conditions that we ought to be shamed into doing something about. I hope we will hear today about substantial progress, because some of the conditions are awful. I have heard about cages that are so small that pregnant mothers are unable to turn around and move for four or five weeks once a litter is born. Even DEFRA recognises that these conditions can restrict a sow’s normal behaviour, including nesting behaviour.

We know that the European Commission plans to ban cages for all farmed animals, hopefully by 2027. Significantly for us, it will also look to prohibit the import of food from caged systems. We no longer have to automatically follow what the EU is doing, but we ought to be using our new-found freedoms to go further and faster than the EU so that we can genuinely say that we are the world leader in animal welfare. Let us do that rather than go the other way.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

Further to that point about our new-found freedom, many of my constituents voted to leave the European Union in order to enhance our animal welfare standards. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that when we introduce new animal welfare legislation, we must ensure that we do not repeat the mistake, which my right hon. Friend the Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) mentioned, of looking only at the domestic position and outsourcing poor practice to other countries? If we introduce a ban, we must ensure that we do not enable poor practice via imports.

[Justin Madders]

The hon. Member makes an important point. That should be said not just for animal welfare standards but for environmental standards and employment protections, all of which we used to have on a clear level from the EU.

Three out of four UK adults back a ban on the use of cages for breeding game birds, and a large coalition of animal welfare charities also backs a ban on cages. As I mentioned, the EU is the largest export market for UK farmers, so I hope we all agree that there is an economic case here as well as a moral one. If we are truly to call ourselves a progressive nation of animal lovers, we must phase out this outdated and cruel practice. The lack of action over the last year paints a very different picture from the commitment to keeping these reforms on the go.

The use of cages for breeding game birds should be also banned. Wider action against cages in farming should include the breeding of game birds to end cruelty and provide consistency across species. Figures from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust show that more than 60 million non-native pheasants and partridges are released every year in the UK to be shot for sport. Many of these birds are bred in the UK using factory-style farming and raised laying cages.

Breeding birds are often kept in small wire cages for much of their breeding lives. As we have heard, those cages are incredibly small. They provide approximately 0.0011% of the space that a pheasant would typically enjoy in the wild, and 0.00004% of the space that a partridge would enjoy. We would not tolerate that for a dog or a cat, so why should we tolerate it for game birds?

Given the semi-wild nature of pheasants and partridges, the cramped conditions of the cages cause stress and injury, including painful open foot sores, exposure to extreme temperatures and injury caused by escape attempts. Aggression is also a common sign of stress in these birds, which can result in self-injury or injury to other birds. Given the conditions they are kept in, that is hardly surprising. It is also hardly surprising that most people, when told about these conditions, agree that as a nation of animal lovers we should not allow those kinds of things to happen.

I hope that we get agreement and acceptance from the Minister that this kind of treatment of any animal should be consigned to history, and that there is a clear road map and timetable for that to happen as soon as possible.