Intensive Dairy Farming

Roger Gale Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) on securing this debate, his measured introduction and balancing clear arguments on welfare and costs. May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), who brings personal expertise to this debate in a way that most hon. Members cannot? It is more than 60 years since I first tried to milk a cow by hand and if I tried it today, I probably would not be good at it.

Anybody who has been brought up in the west country, as I was fortunate enough to be, cannot fail to recognise the importance of the dairy industry to the rural economy and to our countryside environment.

My hon. and learned Friend initially said that super-dairies were a planning issue, although he moved away from that posture. Technically, that is correct, as is the case with the one in his constituency, but I venture to suggest that the issue goes much deeper and is a moral one. Those of us who are sad enough to wake up too early and find ourselves listening to “Farming Today” know only too well, because we hear about it with monotonous regularity, the plight of the dairy industry. Having heard the figures—they were placed on the record again this morning—we understand how dairy farmers are being screwed by the supermarket industry. That may be inelegant, but it is accurate.

The debate so far has concentrated on the obvious economic problems to the detriment, to some extent, of the moral argument. Those of us who have knocked around in this place for a bit—some of us are here today—participated in the campaign to ban veal crates in the United Kingdom. We were highly delighted when we succeeded, and the Government of the day outlawed the use of crates in this country. With glorious hindsight, with which we are blessed, it was a pyrrhic victory, because all we did was to move the problem from A to B, and veal calves that were once reared under relatively humane conditions, albeit not desirable, in the United Kingdom are now reared under infinitely worse conditions on mainland Europe. Not only that, they are first transported to mainland Europe by sea. Far from win-win, we can fairly say with hindsight that it was lose-lose.

My concern is that unless we get the matter right, we are in grave danger of moving the dairy problem from A to B, to the detriment of the British dairy industry and of animal welfare, so again it could be lose-lose. Reference was made to regulations from Brussels being an argument for another day but, with respect, I believe that it is an argument for today. Unless we engineer a situation that overrides European regulations on free trade, and put in place measures that will not allow to be sold in the United Kingdom animal produce that has been reared under conditions that we would not permit in this country, we shall lose.

I detect that no one in the Chamber wants super-dairies to take over from traditional dairy farms, but the danger is that those who fund the super-dairies will take their money to northern France, Belgium, Holland or elsewhere close by on mainland Europe and produce precisely the same quantities of milk under precisely the same undesirable circumstances. We will import it and our British dairy farmers will go out of business.

[Robert Flello]

I am listening with great interest and appreciating the passion of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Will he draw some parallels with what has happened in the pottery industry in my constituency, where the work has gone abroad? Pottery owners drove down prices as much as possible to try to compete with cheap imports until they were no longer competitive. Production moved abroad, goods were produced more cheaply and then imported back, and were passed off as being produced here because they were packaged here. Is not the same thing happening already in the food industry with pork being imported, packaged and sold to unsuspecting British consumers as though it were British pork? I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s line of argument, and perhaps he will draw some parallels.

[Mr Gale]

I will not be tempted down that road, simply because it is probably outside the remit of this debate, and because there is a fundamental difference. Of course, I accept that cheap imports of anything from anywhere can damage our UK producers and, therefore, to some extent our UK economy. Mass production is a feature of the world, and we import goods from all over the world, but we are talking about welfare. We still import veal that has been produced in veal crates, while not allowing veal crates here. That is a welfare issue. We still import chickens and pigmeat that are produced under intensive conditions that we would simply not allow in the United Kingdom. I fail to see how it can be right for us to shackle United Kingdom agricultural producers and to tie one, if not both hands behind their back, while cheerfully allowing European trade regulations to override all those welfare considerations so that our markets are flooded by anything from anywhere, produced under any circumstances. That is morally wrong, and we must stop it.

If the public seriously believe in the moral and welfare issues, they must be prepared to pay. We must be prepared to pay a fair price to farmers for our food—not to the middle man or the supermarket, but at the very beginning to farmers. That is the only way to secure the right to demand high animal welfare standards. But I must tell my hon. Friend the Minister that in tandem with that, we must get regulation under control so that we not only pass, but enforce on Europe and the rest of the world the welfare regulations that we apply to ourselves here in the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Leigh, as it was under Mrs Riordan’s. This has been an excellent debate. I congratulate the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) on securing it. He spoke with great passion and authority.

I also wish to commend the contributions of the hon. Members for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) and for North Thanet (Mr Gale), who referred to the moral argument underpinning the issue and to the need for EU-level reform. I thank the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), who made an interesting and thoughtful speech. The hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) spoke of the need to promote further scientific research with the authority of being a dairy farmer. I also wish to commend the speech of the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish).

The dairy industry in the United Kingdom has been through an extremely volatile period. Intensive farming raises three challenges: first, animal welfare; secondly, greenhouse gas emissions, to which I think the hon. Member for Richmond Park referred; and thirdly, market distortions, which we hope the work on the grocery ombudsman, begun under the previous Government, will address. I hope that that work will be implemented under the current Government. I shall develop each of the points in turn.

After a period of extreme volatility, the dairy industry in the UK is still the third largest in the EU and the ninth largest in the world, producing more than 11 billion litres per annum, amounting to more than 16% of agricultural output last year, and contributing £3.1 billion to the economy. Despite the volatility in production and prices, yield per cow increased between 1995 and 2005, and average yield per cow increased in 2008 and 2009. The NFU said earlier this year that a typical UK dairy farm with a herd of 113 is likely to produce approximately a million litres of milk per year, with the average yield per cow increasing from slightly less than 6,000 litres in 2000 to more than 7,000 in 2010.

It is clear that it is ultimately for the local council and, if brought in by the Government, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to determine what happens in Nocton. I do not wish to comment on the precise legal technicalities of the process that may come in future. However, the debate has raised wider questions on what the view of DEFRA and right hon. and hon. Members should be towards intensifying farming, based on the three points that I mentioned.

There does not seem to be consensus that intensifying farming will universally lead to negative outcomes on animal welfare. The Farm Animal Welfare Council and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have said that, in their view, intensification will not necessarily lead to a diminution in animal welfare.

[Mr Gale]

Does the shadow Minister accept that there is a fundamental difference between animal health and animal welfare? One is quantifiable and easy to identify, and the other is much harder to identify, but just as important.

[Mr Bain]

That is an extremely good point. The hon. Gentleman anticipated the argument that I was going to advance. There is a need for more research into intensification. In the United States, farms of 15,000 cows or more are not unknown, and the proportion of farms with more than 500 cows has doubled from 31.3% to 59.5% of the national herd. Less than half the farms with under 99 cows are still in business, so it is clear that there has been an impact on the small dairy farmer in the US. It is important that we conduct economic research into whether the same would happen in the EU.