Farm Animal Welfare

Lord Benyon Excerpts

Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have, if any, to improve the standards of farm animal welfare.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Benyon) (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. We have delivered an ambitious legislative programme since the publication of the Action Plan for Animal Welfare. We are committed to maintaining our strong track record on animal welfare and delivering continued improvements in the course of this Parliament and beyond. This includes our commitment to ban the export of live animals for fattening and slaughter.

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. Defra’s call for evidence showed strong support and appetite from the public for animal welfare labelling on supermarket products to level the playing field for British farmers and help consumers make informed choices based on how the food they buy has been produced. That could not be more important when future trade deals will allow food to be imported which has been produced to lower standards than we legally allow in this country. Supermarkets such as Waitrose have already shown their voluntary commitment to leading standards of animal welfare. It is vital that there is a means for different standards of farming practices to be clearly and consistently communicated to consumers to help them and provide choices. Can the Minister confirm when he will publish the long-awaited consultation setting out the proposals to expand mandatory labelling requirements for animal welfare for both imported and domestic products?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that the power to improve animal welfare lies in large measure with the consumer, and keeping the consumer informed is a key part of this. Therefore, in answer to her question, we received over 1,600 responses to the consultation, a summary of which is available on GOV.UK. Based on the evidence provided, the Government are continuing to explore options for improving and expanding mandatory animal welfare labelling, covering both domestic and imported products, and we will keep the House informed of our progress.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, while I applaud the high standards that farming communities and the Government have achieved on farmed animals in this country, does my noble friend regret the fact that we have not extended the same high standards to imports, particularly those from Australia and New Zealand through the free trade agreements? Will he give the House a commitment today that future trade agreements will insist on the same animal welfare and environmental standards for imports as are applied in this country?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

Imports into the UK must comply with our existing import requirements. Products produced to different environmental and animal welfare standards can be placed on the UK market if they comply with these requirements. We are taking a tailored approach in each of our new free trade agreements. For example, pork, poultry and eggs were excluded from our agreement with Australia, and in our agreements with Australia and New Zealand, we secured non-regression and non-derogation clauses on animal welfare. This will be a feature of future agreements.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I take this opportunity to thank the noble Lord for his courteous correspondence after the conclusion of the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act. Apropos of that Act, it is very clear that, when we start to modify animals, there will be a number of mutations which are likely to be unpredictable. Can the Minister give us some idea of how we will control the potential for animal cruelty when mutant animals are produced in this sort of way?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his involvement with that Act. He challenged me and the House to become more knowledgeable during our debates on it. We think that the Act will have huge benefits for animal welfare; I have two examples for the noble Lord. The Roslin Institute and Genus have developed gene-edited versions of pigs, which could improve the situation with regard to porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome, a terrible disease of that animal. The other example is pancreatic necrosis virus in salmon. We want to make sure that we are regulating this properly; we talked about that throughout debates on the Act. We now have a system in which there is transparency about how we regulate that, but I will continue to keep the House informed as we develop that.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, can the Minister clarify exactly when the ban on live animals for slaughter being exported is coming in? Is it not a fact that, when and if it does, it could not apply to Northern Ireland because Northern Ireland has been under EU rules on live animals for slaughter?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The number of live animals exported from Great Britain since Brexit has been zero—none: not one. There is one vessel, the “Joline”, which operates out of Folkestone and has the capacity to take live exports from Great Britain to Europe, and there is none going on that vessel at the moment. We still want to bring in this legislation, because there may be future demand, the infrastructure to support that trade might start up again and we want to make sure we are legislating in the right way. On the key point about Northern Ireland, that is an even more complex issue, because we are trying to resolve this through the Windsor Framework, but I will write to the noble Baroness on that.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Fookes (Con)]

Perhaps I may take issue with my noble friend about the export of animals for slaughter, which has been a concern of mine for more years than I now care to remember. This is a good time to do it when nothing much is happening; that could change overnight. What is more, countries such as Australia are seriously considering operating such a ban. Here, we could give a good lead, and if the Government want to be at the forefront, now is the time to do it.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I agree with my noble friend. She is not taking issue with me; she is pushing at an open door. This is a manifesto commitment and in our animal welfare action plan, and we want to do it.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Given that the hundreds of millions of food production animals that we eat have to be slaughtered first, should not the public be entitled to know what the method of slaughter is?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

We have a very clear set of guidelines, which we have improved in recent years, such as by putting CCTV cameras in slaughterhouses. As the noble Lord will know, the Food Standards Agency oversees this and requires vets to be present. I think his point relates to pre-stun slaughter, and that is an ongoing discussion. We want to work with those groups that want a particular type of slaughter, while recognising that there is a very strong view out there about our knowledge and understanding of what an animal senses in those final moments of its life. We want to make sure that our WATOK rules, as they are called, are absolutely up to date, and I shall continue to keep him informed of this.

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

My Lords, it is absolutely right that the Government seek to be at the forefront not only of technology but also of animal welfare. What thinking is there in the department about the future of meat, particularly lab-grown meat and whether there are any welfare implications for lab-grown meat in future?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

This is a fast-moving technology all over the world, and I think people look at it with some suspicion in terms of where plants come from and what has to happen to plants in order to make them both taste like meat and look like meat. We want to support a livestock industry in this country that continues to have a much wider benefit across the rural economy but with the highest welfare standards possible. However, in this area of policy, if a Minister was to stand at this Dispatch Box and go to the furthest extreme possible, there would still be people in the animal welfare movement—or more the animal rights movement—who would say it is too little, too late; you will never satisfy everyone. I think the Government have this right.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

Nearly three years ago, the campaign group Christian Ethics of Farmed Animal Welfare published a report exploring the ethics of current farming practices, yet little has seemingly progressed. When Christian churches are concerned about severe welfare problems experienced by caged laying hens, broiler chickens and the impact of fast-growth breeds, we should probably take note. What discussions is the Minister having with chicken farmers to encourage transition back to slower-growing, higher-welfare breeds of chicken, as recommended by the RSPCA?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I refer the noble Baroness to my earlier comments about the power of the consumer here and retailers in informing their consumers and providing what they want. There is that side to it, but the Government have a role. The UK is currently 91% self-sufficient in eggs and produces 40 million hens per year. The movement for them to be either in cages where there are high welfare standards or reared in the open air is now moving very fast, but there is more that we can do. That is why we passed several rafts of legislation in recent years: the Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Act; the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act, which does have relevance here; the Animals (Penalty Notices) Act; and a whole range of other measures, which we described in the Action Plan for Animal Welfare which the Government are taking through. Some of them are legislative but not all of them.