Sustainable Livestock Bill

Robert Flello Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Friends of the Earth and its many activists across the UK and, indeed, the world for the support and commitment that they have shown on this crucial issue. I am indebted to Martyn Williams and his team for the hours of work put in to bring the Bill forward. I should also like to thank Dairy UK, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the National Trust, the Soil Association, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, the National Farmers Union, Compassion in World Farming and many other groups for talking to me about their views on this matter.

A number of people have asked why a Member of Parliament who clearly enjoys his food, and who represents an urban constituency and one of the more deprived areas of the country, should be bothered about how animals are reared for food production. As I intend to explain, it is precisely for those reasons and more that the Bill must make progress through the House.

Let me illustrate my point. Many people watching this debate will see adverts depicting animals being reared on pasture. It is not without good reason that the marketing staff of a certain burger chain show images of green fields and cattle grazing. They want consumers to believe that their burgers are healthy and natural. Equally, a dairy company ad shows a child bringing a glass of milk from the cow in the field to the dairy door to make into yoghurt. Why do they show such images? Because it is a natural instinct to equate ruminants with pasture grazing, yet the truth is something that the ad men wish to shield us from.

The reality is that, with some exceptions, our livestock are no longer grazed on natural pasture out in the fields, where traditional hardy breeds can live all year round. Our livestock are now routinely kept indoors for anything up to the whole year, and are fed on cereals, especially imported soya. Hardy breeds are being phased out in favour of high-yielding, carefully selected animals. The more I have dug into the subject, the more troubling I have found it. There have been books and papers galore written about the issues. There are seminars and discussions taking place on the subject across the globe even as I speak. At the risk of making what is perhaps quite a suitable pun, it really was a case of opening up a can of worms.

The United Nations report, “Livestock’s long shadow”, notes that livestock farming is among the two or three most significant contributors to global climate change on every scale from local to global. It has calculated that from 18% to as much as 51% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gases come from livestock production. Some organisations will say that that is a myth, or else that the answer to the adverse effects is even greater industrialisation of livestock production. Indeed, some will say that it is all a vegetarian conspiracy or similar, designed to stop us eating meat or to put British farmers out of business. Rubbish.

Some of the drivers behind climate change are hidden. For example, the production of soya in south America requires high-nitrate fertilisers and weedkillers, and there are greenhouse gas emissions from both the production of those fertilisers and chemical sprays and their transportation to farms. There is also the high energy use involved in harvesting the soya and transporting it halfway round the world to Europe for use in animal feeds. As I shall go on to say, the land clearance to grow the soya also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and causes further climate change.

It is not just greenhouse gases that are an issue; there is the direct impact on people, too. The number of farms in the UK has declined, and with them, the number of farmers and their workers. Thankfully, the vast majority of farms are still smaller, family-run businesses in rural areas, but for how long? The advent of dairy super-sheds, such as the one proposed in Nocton in Lincolnshire, with its 8,000 head of cattle, can only hasten the demise of both the smaller British farmer and the rural economy that he or she supports. Our British farmers who get caught up in the vicious cycle of intensification are then at the mercy of soya prices, with their direct link to world oil prices.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the entire UK agricultural industry is responsible for just 7% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, and that our industry’s emissions have already fallen by 21% since 1990?

[Robert Flello]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but the figures depend on how one measures emissions and where one puts the marker down, as organisations such as Dairy UK are more than prepared to accept.

It is not only in the UK that people are adversely affected by the issue. I met an activist from Paraguay who told me about the subsistence farmers in his country. They are forced off their land, either by the big-money soya farmers who are taking over vast tracts of their countryside, or through the indiscriminate use of glyphosate weedkillers, which are sprayed without consideration on to the genetically modified soya crops, poisoning the land and the water supply and, horrifically, in too many cases, killing and injuring local citizens. There are problems not just in Paraguay; in the cerrado area of Brazil, there were over 900 species of birds and 10,000 different species of plant. The cerrado or savannah has now been reduced to half its original size because of land clearance to grow soya and biofuels. The same applies to rainforests and other parts of the world.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

On that point, has the hon. Gentleman any assessment of what percentage of that rain forest destruction, which I accept has taken place, relates to the import to this country of soya-based products, and what percentage relates to the rest of the world?

[Robert Flello]

The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point, and that is just the sort of thing that we should discuss in Committee, if the Bill receives its Second Reading today.

The claims over the past decade of abundant food and EU food mountains have now switched to the familiar cry that we need to double food supply in the next 10 years or so, yet how can such an increased reliance on oil help with food security? A dairy farmer in Whitmore, near my constituency, who is leading the way on sustainable livestock farming, put it simply. He said that it is now the job of dairy farmers to turn oil into milk. However, he sees his role as trying to produce high volumes of milk with minimal oil, and that is the sustainable, food-secure route. He does it by using natural pasture and clovers.

If we really need to increase food production, why are we feeding cereals to animals? It is very inefficient. It takes around 20 kg of cereal to produce just 1 kg of edible beef. That is not food-secure. Some 58% of EU cereal production is used in animal feeds, and that is supplemented by the 33 million tonnes of soya imported each year. How is that food-secure?

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

Is there not a more important issue, in that much of the soya is not even kept in the food chain, but is used for making oil and for burning?

[Robert Flello]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and again, those are the issues that we really need to tease out in Committee.

The purpose of my Bill is not, contrary to what some have suggested, to add to the bureaucratic burden on farmers; that is nonsense. No one will find anything in the Bill that does that. Quite the opposite; the Bill says that the Secretary of State will have an obligation to ensure that British farmers are kept in their jobs.

[Ian Paisley]

Clause 1(2)(e) refers to

“changing the subsidies available to…support…farmers to promote sustainable livestock practices”.

Any change to the subsidy will have an impact on the application process that a farmer has to go through. That will put a practical burden on the farmer. Indeed, trying to adjust subsidies in the European Community is against World Trade Organisation and common agricultural policy practices and policies. I accept that the hon. Gentleman’s motivation is very positive, but the practical impact will be to impose red tape and a burden on farmers.

[Robert Flello]

I am grateful again to the hon. Gentleman. He will find that the CAP subsidy system is up for review in the next couple of years and there may well be changes anyway. That is even more of a reason to ensure that the future subsidy system operates in a way that is both efficient and effective for the farmer, but also promotes sustainability.

My Bill simply requires the Secretary of State to think about how every policy he works on can improve sustainability. It has been said by some that legislation is not needed—indeed, I am expecting speeches on that point very shortly—and that the Government could simply implement policies that tackle the problem. I wish that were the case. To my regret, the previous Government, despite documents such as “Food 2030”, which acknowledged the impact of soya on climate change, did not take action on that. I am sad to say that the coalition Government thus far have issued the natural environment White Paper, but the Department’s own business plan for 2011 to 2015 has no mention of the impact of soya. Clearly, legislation is definitely needed. My Bill is a “direction of travel” Bill that gives the Secretary of State wide leeway, but nevertheless requires her to take sustainable livestock seriously, and to take action.

I know that there will be some in this Chamber who, for whatever reason, will be unhappy about the Bill, so for them let me quote some words from a 2008 speech:

“Calorie for calorie, you need more grain if you eat it transformed into meat than you do if you eat it turned into bread…As a result, farmers now feed 250 million more tonnes of grain to their animals than they did twenty years ago. That’s enough wheat to feed the population of Brazil—for twenty-five years.”

Those are not my words; they are the words of the Prime Minister when he was in opposition in 2008. He identified the scale of the problem, but sadly not a single policy has found its way into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to do anything about it as yet—I hope it does. That is why we need the Bill, and why I hope that hon. Members across the Chamber will allow the Bill to pass today unopposed into Committee, where we can sort out the detail, have the discussions, get people around the table, which is exactly what the Bill proposes. I hope hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber will engage in robust debate, but then move on to the subsequent business of the day.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Flello]

claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).

Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I cannot speak for the promoter of the Bill, and unless he seeks to intervene to clarify that matter, I fear that it will remain unanswered.

The final point that I want to make is that there is a real muddle in the Bill about its extent and application. As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the Bill purports to relate to England and Wales, despite the fact that Wales has devolved responsibility, but the body of the Bill contains all sorts of references to applicability to the United Kingdom, and indeed to countries overseas. I think it shows that the Bill was cobbled together at the last minute—but that is not to suggest that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South put the Bill together at the last minute.

I have a suspicion about what happened—I do not know whether I am correct, but it has often happened in the past. Hon. Members bring forward a private Member’s Bill. They get it drafted, but they are not quite ready to have it printed because they are waiting for the Government to provide an answer on various points. Then when they get the Government’s answer they realise that the Government are rather against a lot of the Bill’s provisions, so they redraft the Bill, perhaps on an iterative basis. That means that the Bill is redrafted very close to the time when it should be presented. The consequence is that it contains inconsistencies.

[Robert Flello]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Chope]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Flello]

The hon. Gentleman has a tremendous reputation in the House, both for the ability to talk and for his concern for the democratic process in this place. Just to clarify the point for him, the Bill in its original form was subjected to severe and detailed amendment following a discussion with the Minister, and the new version of the Bill was put together following consultation with a range of organisations, not least the National Farmers Union. It has had a lot of discussion and a lot of planning in its current form; it was not rushed through. It took a little bit of time to prepare and went through a few iterations to ensure that it would have credibility and meet with understanding in the House.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that, but it makes it all the more disappointing that the Bill, notwithstanding all that careful work that has been done on it, contains such fundamental flaws as it is presented to this House. If we are to ask hon. Members to take up time examining Bills in detail in Committee, those Bills should be in a much better state before they go to Committee than this Bill is in. For that reason, were this matter to come to a vote, I would vote against giving the Bill a Second Reading.