Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill (Sixth sitting)

Katherine Fletcher Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 5th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

In the past 40 years, the milk yield of cows has more than doubled to around 22 litres a day. That is obviously far more than cows would naturally produce if they were just feeding their calves. There are issues with mastitis for a start, and cows are becoming unfertile extremely quickly as a result of intensive milking. In the wild, a cow’s natural life cycle would be about 20 years, but when raised under intensive farming conditions, it is three or four years. All of that has happened through natural breeding techniques but that is incompatible with good animal welfare, because we are literally squeezing as much as we can out of an animal. Its life is massively shortened because of how it is treated. With gene editing, I am concerned about whether we are expecting to increase yield beyond 22 litres a day. What exactly are we expecting to get out of cows?

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am listening hard to the hon. Lady’s speech and I wholeheartedly agree with her about some of the welfare issues she has described. Does she agree, however, that the Bill offers the opportunity to solve some of the problems that she has identified? The problem with natural breeding is that we effectively chuck everything up in the air, and then it comes back together with one part from the mum and one from the dad. That means that when we select for improved production, we cannot also make sure that we are selecting for health and fitness. We are stuck with the selection—for example, we may select for a dog whose face gets smaller and smaller. I understand what the hon. Lady is saying about making sure that we do not use gene editing just to target individual production methods, but does she share my excitement that the Bill offers the opportunity to fix some of the inherent deficits that traditional breeding has imposed on animals—animals that I know many farmers work with every day, and love?

[Kerry McCarthy]

My concern is that that is not spelled out in the Bill, and it goes back to our argument about the public benefit. I would be far more comfortable if the Bill spelled out what the hon. Lady has described and made it clear that that is what it is designed to achieve. The ongoing welfare of the animal should be one of the factors to be taken into account when deciding whether to approve applications. The Bill is not clear about that. Market forces being what they are, some people will want to use the Bill as an opportunity to increase yields.

[Katherine Fletcher]

I understand that the hon. Lady is leery about market consequences, and we should always have a good look at them. Some of the welfare issues that we think of as distressing also have a financial cost attached to them—increased vets’ charges; increased housing requirements; and increased vets’ visits. Would the hon. Lady risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater by being specific about the Bill, because a happy, healthy animal that is productive and fecund is an economic positive for the individuals who seek to farm them?

[Kerry McCarthy]

One might think so, but consider the lifespan of cows and that fact that they become infertile pretty quickly. One would think that logic would suggest that a farmer would want a cow that they did not literally milk for everything, and that lived a longer, healthier and fertile life. That is not what happens on some farms. Some farmers view the economic advantage to them as getting as much out of a cow as possible in its shorter lifespan. We want to encourage best practice, and I am not casting aspersions on farmers who want to do the right thing, but we know that big market forces are at work, particularly in chicken production. In fact, wherever products are sold in bulk and consumed in vast quantities, some players in that market will not have animal welfare in mind.

I am conscious of time, so to conclude, amendment 7 calls for welfare reports to be submitted to the Secretary of State to consider whether yields would be increased and whether that would lead to suffering. That goes to the nub of the issue. I will not repeat what I said earlier, but if the development of gene editing led to the phase out of some of the diseases that affect animal welfare, I would like more reassurances about what that would mean for increased density and animals kept in cramped conditions, and so on. If we have a stronger animal, that might mean that it is thought they can withstand such treatment.

I think the welfare provisions are too weak, and far too much is being left to regulations and consideration at some point in the future. The Bill should have been put on hold while we made more inquiries and gathered more information. That would have meant that we were discussing a fully rounded Bill, and that we knew what we were likely to get from it.