Agriculture and Food Industry

Lord Trees Excerpts

Thursday 24th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to contribute to this debate on agriculture and the food industry, which I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, for initiating. It is on agriculture that I wish to focus.

Agriculture, as has been said by several noble Lords, contributes hugely to the economy—£9 billion to the UK economy in gross value added—making it one of the biggest manufacturing sectors in our land. Its value, of course, extends much beyond that. It underpins much of the food sector, about which we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, which is worth far more—about £88 billion in gross value added to the economy in 2012. More than that, agriculture is the custodian for most of our land. Some 71% of the land area of the UK is classed as agricultural. Finally, as has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, agriculture provides a substantial part of our food. Some 76% of the food that we could grow in Britain we are growing and providing for the nation. In that respect, it underpins our security, health, and productivity.

I want to concentrate particularly on livestock production and in that respect I draw attention to my register of interests and my chairmanship of an animal health research institute. Nearly 40% of the total UK land area is classed as permanent grassland, much of it upland and in less favoured areas. This is ideal for raising ruminants, which turn indigestible cellulose in grass into nutritious products that are in high demand nationally and internationally.

The gross output value for livestock production is estimated at £14.2 billion in the UK in 2013. That makes it a very substantial level of productivity in comparison with other EU member states, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, outlined. However, we still have a substantial overall negative balance of payments position for livestock products. This presents a challenge but, coupled with the likely increase in the value of livestock as the result of a rapidly expanding global population which demands more meat and dairy products, it also presents a great opportunity.

Production of food in the UK is under threat from competing claims for land use within the finite boundaries of our land. There are competing claims for energy production, forestry, transport infrastructure, conservation and so on. In future, land for agriculture and livestock production will reduce.

None the less, our livestock industry has been very resilient in recent years. Productivity has been more or less maintained and in some cases considerably increased, although the number of animals and holdings has decreased in many cases. For example, in the dairy industry between 1997 and 2005 the size of the dairy herd shrank by 20% but milk production fell by only 2%. This has been achieved partly by fewer but bigger units with concomitant efficiency gains. However, there can be downsides to that. I have not the time to go into them but the pollution and so on will be apparent to your Lordships.

In terms of increasing efficiency of livestock production, what does not have downsides is improving the health of our herds and flocks. In a given period, disease morbidity impairs productivity but inputs, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions remain more or less the same. Mortality from disease of course stops production from an animal. One loses totally its productive capacity without reducing the inputs and emissions up to the point of death. Improving health can reverse all these negative impacts.

Investment in disease control and the application of science is essential. Recent initiatives such as the Government’s agritech strategy are very welcome, but overall investment in agricultural research in 2010 was just 5% of the gross value added of the industry. I suggest that that is below the norm for comparable high-tech industries. This investment does not all have to come from the Government of course: industry should contribute. However, given the national importance of food production, the Government have an important part to play.

It is essential in supporting research investment that we give attention to endemic disease research—those diseases indigenous to the UK which affect livestock every minute of every hour of every day, 365 days a year. They are diseases such as mastitis, lameness, reproductive and parasitic diseases and, of course, TB. It is important that we emphasise research on those endemic diseases as well as protect against incursions of so-called transboundary diseases like foot and mouth. It is also important that we gear incentives to reward health and not disease, and that biosecurity, health planning and disease surveillance—the concepts of protect and prevent—are given appropriate emphasis rather than purely reactive measures. Research into and application of disease prevention measures are the equivalent of insurance. It is tempting to cut back on this, especially when times are hard but, to use a domestic analogy, it is a false economy to cancel one’s household insurance if the house then burns down.

The reforms of the common agricultural policy, which is set to distribute £15 billion in England alone between 2014 and 2020, give an opportunity to reposition a proportion of funding to support and facilitate farmers to embrace health planning and disease prevention. Maintaining or even improving productivity from fewer animals reduces pollution and reduces inputs in imported feedstuffs and greenhouse gas emissions but increases food security and improves animal welfare. It makes sense to improve animal health and thereby strengthen a sustainable agricultural economy so that it can continue to make such a valuable contribution to the nation’s well-being.

Bovine Tuberculosis

Lord Trees Excerpts

Wednesday 25th June 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Trees]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to modify their strategy to control bovine tuberculosis in the United Kingdom in the light of the independent expert panel report on the pilot badger culls.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, in April we launched our TB strategy, setting out our plans to achieve officially TB-free status by 2038 through both new and existing tools. We have always been clear that lessons would be learnt from the badger control pilots. Having considered the report of the independent expert panel, we have accepted its conclusions and are currently working to implement its recommendations in advance of the second year of culling in Gloucestershire and Somerset.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. In the light of the fact that vaccination is likely to be a significant, although not the only, tool in the future long-term and sustainable control of this terrible disease, can the Minister give this House an assurance that the three important goals of research into and development of an oral vaccine for badgers, the registration and deployment of a cattle vaccine and the research into and development of appropriate cattle diagnostic tests will not be hindered by a lack of resources?

[Baroness Northover]

I can give the noble Lord that assurance. I hope that he was pleased to see the strategy announced at the beginning of April, which makes it very clear that culling is only a small part of an overall approach to this disease. He has outlined some very important areas, and Defra has pledged significant support to take that research forward. I hope that the noble Lord will also be pleased with the announcement of support for vaccination on the edge between the areas with a high incidence of bovine TB and those that currently have a lower incidence.

Animal Welfare: Methods of Slaughter

Lord Trees Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Trees]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the ethical, legal and religious factors that influence the way in which some animals are slaughtered in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Trees (CB)]

My Lords, in my 45 years as a veterinary surgeon I have witnessed the abattoir slaughter of many animals with and without stunning, but when I first witnessed slaughter without stunning it was profoundly disturbing. The animal staggered from its killing crate, blood gushing from the neck wound, and it did not collapse into unconsciousness for some considerable time. It is that experience and others since that have caused me to bring this debate.

It might be useful initially to cover the legal framework surrounding the slaughter of animals—and I am going to concentrate on cattle and sheep. The legal framework is straightforward. In abattoirs, the death of animals is due to exsanguination following severance of the major blood vessels in the neck. It is illegal in the UK and throughout the EU to do that without first rendering animals insensible by stunning—except that that requirement for pre-stunning is exempted for those of Muslim and Jewish faiths to produce either respectively halal meat or kosher meat by shechita. I intend to talk about stunning and non-stunning in the rest of my speech.

Noble Lords have heard my reactions. Let me quote the reactions of a female, Jewish vet, who recently sent me an e-mail. She said:

“Without a doubt, during my almost twenty years as a vet, I have never witnessed anything as horrific as Shechita slaughter. That horror lives fresh in my mind today and having been raised and now living in a Kosher home I do not and never have eaten a piece of Kosher meat since the day I witnessed this barbaric practice. Indeed I have seen much suffering and many severe injuries in the animals I have treated over the years, but nothing comes close to the unnecessary and brutal suffering that these animals experience at the very end of their lives”.

Note that that is from a qualified, official veterinary surgeon who has done a lot of meat hygiene work and has witnessed the slaughter of many animals involving both stunning and non-stunning.

Let me emphasise that I recognise that both the great faiths in question have serious concerns for animal welfare. I also make it quite clear that I defend and respect the freedom of expression of all groups, religious or non-religious, within reasonable limits acceptable to our society. Nevertheless, it is my contention that unnecessary suffering is being caused to a very substantial number of animals by slaughter without stunning. I want to address this under three headings: inconsistency, injury and insult.

In terms of inconsistency, we rightly pride ourselves here in Britain on our animal welfare regulations and our humaneness. Recently, it has been made an offence to dock a puppy dog’s tail. That is something that involved a snip with a pair of scissors which, on a week-old pup, evoked at most a slight yelp. We have made that illegal—and I am happy with that law—yet we allow adult animals to have their throats cut without rendering them unconscious first. Is that a consistent approach to humaneness?

I turn to biological tissue injury. The Farm Animal Welfare Council, in its report of 2003, considered the whole issue of slaughter without stunning in great detail. Considering the injury to the neck involved in throat-cutting, the council noted that this involved the incision of skin, muscle, trachea, oesophagus, both jugular veins, both carotid arteries, major nerve trunks and several other nerves. It concluded that,

“such a massive injury would result in very significant pain and distress in the period before insensibility supervenes”.

The FAWC report went on to refer to evidence of the time taken to lose brain responsiveness in different species following the neck cut. It noted that in sheep it was five to 10 seconds; in adult cattle, with excellent technique, it was a minimum of 22 to 40 seconds; and in calves it was 10 to 120 seconds. Twenty seconds is a long time if you are suffering pain. The FAWC report—and remember that this is the Government’s independent advisory committee—recommended in its 2003 report that,

“the Government should repeal the current exemption”

from pre-stunning.

I turn to insult. By this I mean tissue damage and particularly the induction of pain—I mean a biological insult. Determining the perception of pain can be very difficult, I acknowledge, but some recent research has been done on calves in New Zealand which I would argue provides strong evidence that pain is perceived by a neck cut and that stunning abrogates that. In this work, electrophysiological measurements were taken of brain signals, for which there was supportive evidence of their being associated with pain. A neck cut without pre-stunning caused pain signals lasting for up to two minutes. Such signals did not occur when stunning was used before the neck cut. Finally, if the neck cut was made and then animals were stunned, the pain signals occurring after the cut were immediately abolished. Every attempt was made in this work to mimic slaughter without stunning but true shechita could not be performed because, ironically, the animals had to be gently anaesthetised to conform to experimental animal laws and thus could not pass for human consumption, as shechita demands. So I would argue that it is likely that severe pain is caused by slaughter without stunning, albeit for a relatively short period, but perhaps for as much as two minutes in cattle.

How many animals are involved in slaughter without stunning? The latest available survey by the Food Standards Agency, in 2011, indicates that approximately 70,000 cattle are slaughtered in the UK each year without stunning, mainly by shechita, and that about 1.5 million sheep are despatched without stunning, mainly for halal consumption. I should point out that the majority of sheep that are killed for halal purposes in the UK are pre-stunned, but that still leaves the significant minority of 1.5 million that I have referred to. Thus I contend that, given the nature of the biological insult and the numbers involved, slaughter without stunning is a major, if not the major animal welfare issue in the United Kingdom today. A further important fact is that much of the meat from non-stunned slaughter goes into the food chain for mainstream consumers. I suggest that consumers can justifiably expect to be informed if the normal legally required form of humane slaughter has not been used.

All the independent welfare bodies advocate stunning before slaughter—FAWC, the British Veterinary Association, the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, the RSPCA and the Humane Slaughter Association—and furthermore, the food-quality assurance schemes such as red tractor and the Soil Association do not permit non-stun slaughter. In Europe, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland and Iceland have disallowed non-stun slaughter, and New Zealand does not permit the non-stun abattoir slaughter of mammals. Significantly, New Zealand exports large amounts of sheep meat that has been reversibly stunned and certified as halal to Muslim communities in Asia and the Middle East.

The EU is currently conducting a study on providing consumers with the relevant information on the stunning of animals by labelling of meat products. In the UK, the beef and lamb trade organisation EBLEX is working on the issue of clear labelling with halal producers. Will the Government support measures to label meat appropriately to enable consumers to make informed choices?

I make it clear that I am not asking in this debate for non-stun slaughter to be banned. I am not a believer in bans; I would rather that society collectively arrived at decisions about what is acceptable and what is not. However, I sincerely ask the Muslim and Jewish communities and their leaders to reflect and consider whether ancient practices, for which there were good reasons many hundreds of years ago, are necessary today. There are non-lethal, non-invasive methods of stunning, and even if there is disagreement on the extent or duration of pain perception, is it not time to adopt stunning to preclude the possibility of unnecessary suffering—as some Muslim food authorities have allowed?

Health: Neglected Tropical Diseases

Lord Trees Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Trees]

My Lords, the debate today is to mark the first anniversary of the London declaration on neglected tropical diseases. I want to celebrate that important initiative and the considerable progress that has been, and is being, made to control and eradicate these diseases. However, I also want to emphasise that we cannot yet be complacent. The job is not finished and there is much to do, even though the way forward is largely clear.

The NTDs are now getting the attention they deserve because they afflict huge numbers of people in the poorest countries of the world—the so-called “bottom billion”. These diseases are inextricably bound with poverty. It contributes to these diseases and these diseases, in turn, contribute to poverty. Their control is an essential step in the achievement of several key millennium development goals. These diseases, which include many with bizarre, exotic and frightening names such as Kala-Azar, Chagas disease, sleeping sickness, elephantiasis and river blindness, are for the most part chronic and persisting infections, which may eventually kill but which in many cases simply—but seriously—disable, disfigure and stigmatise. The effects are pervasive and extensive in the societies in which they occur.

Another of their characteristics is that many can be treated, controlled and even eradicated with tools that we already have. These are the low-hanging fruit of tropical diseases. The costs of making progress are relatively low and the benefits are huge, as has been said by several speakers. It is very much to the credit of the WHO, the Gates Foundation, various NGOs, scientists and healthcare workers throughout the world, and of course, the London declaration, that these diseases are now being tackled in a concerted and coherent way. The contribution of the UK to this global effort is huge. DfID has played a very substantial part, as have many scientists, medics, vets and healthcare workers based in our universities and in our two schools devoted to tropical medicine and public health in Liverpool and London.

Another hugely important factor has been the donation of drugs by major pharmaceutical companies to this programme. Drugs to the value of $2 billion to $3 billion a year are being donated by big pharma; this is an altruistic gesture that is not always fully appreciated. As a vet, it gives me satisfaction that a lot of these drugs were initially developed for the control of worms in animals. A staggering 700 million tablets are administered each year to school children in developing countries to control enteric worms, and that is just one example. All of these efforts have resulted in a substantial reduction in the incidence of infection and disease, and put the goals of controlling and eradicating many—if not most—of the 17 targeted NTDs by 2020 within reach.

However, there is still a need for an estimated $2 billion to sustain this effort to achieve these goals. That is a lot of money. Currently only 0.6% of overseas development assistance for health globally is being allocated to NTDs. Some $2 billion spread over 7 years among the wealthiest nations of the globe, given the huge return, is surely not only a desirable, but also a necessary investment. Fit and healthy people can work to feed themselves, their families and, their populations and they can contribute to the economic and social progress of their countries which in turn reduces conflict and migration.

There is still a need to develop new products and technologies to continue supporting the development of healthcare systems, health services in endemic countries and particularly systems for delivery of drugs to the point of need. We need to ensure clean water supplies and good sanitation. Notwithstanding that, we now have many of the tools we need. It is the appliance of science, the delivery of what we have, that is the major challenge. Given that there are freely available drugs for many of the NTDs, it is a responsibility we all share to apply these tools to achieve the global benefits. If we fail to do that—to satisfactorily deal with the low-hanging fruit—what hope have we to tackle more complex or technical health problems facing the world?