Official Controls (Animals, Feed and Food, Plant Health etc.) (Amendment) (EU Exit) (No. 2) Regulations 2020

Lord Alderdice Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I have always felt that one of the great contributions we made to the European Union was by insisting upon the environmental and animal welfare standards. Having read these memorandums—the documents on official controls—I found there was so much in them, so I think the Government are committed to us maintaining at least those standards that we had when leaving.

I want to follow a point raised by my noble friend Lord Rooker, who related human health to animal welfare and animal health. I want to ask about a specific aspect of that. We all know that, on the human side, antibiotics are a major contributor when we look at fighting illness and keeping fit. We also know—the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner, will know this in particular, in his profession as a farmer—about farmers making great use of antibiotics and that, as a society, we benefit enormously from that contribution to farming. But although most farmers go to great lengths to minimise the amount of antibiotics they use in farming, there is some passing-over to human health. Of course, the more antibiotics we have in our fight against illness, from whichever source, the greater the resistance we will have in getting the benefit from antibiotics.

I was interested to discover that there is a move to develop a particular type of antibiotics in agriculture, which would be unique to agriculture and would not transfer across to impact human health. Am I right in assuming, when I read these documents, that this sort of activity in Britain is using our science—just as we used it in developing the vaccine to fight Covid—to try to develop that in the fight to improve human health?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Alderdice) (LD)]

The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, has withdrawn so I call the next speaker, the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes.