British Meat and Dairy Products

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 28th April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate, Ms Ghani. I thank my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for securing the debate, because British meat and dairy products are a great asset to the whole country and to everybody who eats them. I can say that I have consumed a large quantity of both meat and dairy; hon. Members can see that a good live weight gain was achieved in the process. Joking apart, we sometimes forget the great part that meat and dairy farming plays in looking after the landscape and the grass. When we look at holding carbon in the soil, we sometimes forget how much carbon is held by permanent pasture.

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart). She raised the interesting point that there is a problem at the moment with exporting from Scotland into Northern Ireland. Scotland should not have to export to Northern Ireland, as it is part of the United Kingdom. We heard evidence at the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from Northern Irish farmers having problems getting sheep from Scotland, because they have been on winter keep since the end of last year and they are not yet able to go over to Northern Ireland. When they get to Northern Ireland, they have to have their tags removed and have another tag put in. I suggest that that is also an animal welfare issue that needs to be dealt with. I have great respect for the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who is here today, and for the Secretary of State, but we need to do more to rectify the trade situation between Scotland and the rest of the UK, including Wales, and Northern Ireland, so I look forward to that being sorted out.

We live in a world where, if we are not careful and if we do not value the great meat and dairy production in this country, we will land up importing a great deal more food. When we import food we have to analyse how it was produced, including looking at the water that was used across the world to produce it. Many countries probably cannot afford to have water taken away from them for the production of exports to this country.

One only has to look at the Brazils of this world to see that they are driving their beef cattle towards the Amazon, they are ploughing up the savannah and they are damaging the environment. We need to help the Brazilians to stop that process. Perhaps the President of Brazil, dare I say it, might have something to do with what is going on. We need to take this very seriously. We must not look for the cheapest product in the world when we import, because doing that does much to damage the environment. We produce our meat and dairy from grass, but we must be careful when we import proteins to help with that because some of that protein, especially the soya bean, is grown on deforested land or savannah. All of these things are important.

The number of Members here today shows that we think our production of both meat and dairy is important. We not only have great permanent pasture but good grass leys. The New Zealanders have done a lot of work on the digestibility of grass leys and different types of grass, which affects the amount of methane gas that animals produce while they are producing meat and milk. If a cow milks more efficiently and gives more litres of milk, the total amount of methane gas given off collectively is far less, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon said. With the production of beef, the more efficiently we can produce it, and the better the breeding, the quicker and faster that beef is produced, and again, the methane gas is far less.

We have to take production of agriculture very much in the round. I think it is very simplistic to say, “Stop eating meat, stop eating dairy—that will solve the problems of the world.” No, it won’t, actually, because the grassland in this country relies entirely on meat and milk production—that is the balance. I made the joke when I started that I am a product of eating much meat and much dairy, so for me to actually say this is almost unbelievable, but there could be an argument that sometimes we do not actually need to eat quite as much meat or quite as much dairy, and I would probably be the first to admit that. On the other hand, a balanced diet is so necessary. If we look at the research, an expectant mother, for example, is not always able to gain the right protein and nutrients without their vegetable or vegan diet being very expensive and diverse. Let us be sensible as we move forward. Meat and dairy play such an important role.

My final point is that this is linked to the countryside that we see and love. Grassland, heathland, moorland, and Exmoor—my constituency adjoins that of my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon through the Blackdown hills, a very small part of Exmoor—these are all areas of grassland and permanent pasture, and they are very beautiful and full of trees. All of those things are so essential. Do not forget that although it is beautiful that people can go and walk in and enjoy our landscape—we want to see more of that—it is not entirely a playground; it is also a production zone for producing good-quality food. If we combine the two, which I think we can do easily, food, farming and the countryside can all come together. I very much support my hon. Friend’s debate.