Leaving the EU: Live Farm Animal Exports

Debate between Roger Gale and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Monday 26th February 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on introducing the debate. I want to touch on a number of issues very briefly, and to deal with a couple of the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire (Bill Wiggin). I normally agree with him, but on this occasion there is clearly a little difference between us.

Let us tackle the fundamental difference between live animals for slaughter, live animals for fattening and live animals for breeding stock. We all understand what “live animals for slaughter” means—that is what the petition is about. My understanding is that “live animals for fattening” is a euphemism for exporting livestock from the United Kingdom to France, Spain, Italy or Greece, where they spend a couple of days in a field and are then slaughtered and branded as local meat, be that French, Spanish, Greek or Italian. Effectively, those animals are live animals for slaughter. My view is that any control exercise should embrace those animals, as well as those that are openly and honestly—if that is the right word—exported for slaughter.

Breeding stock is different. Rather like the racehorses that were referred to earlier, they are high-value animals, they are well looked after and they are transported with great care. That is not the case with animals that are exported for other purposes. The standards in the United Kingdom may occasionally be not too bad, but the standards in mainland Europe are unenforced and unenforceable. In theory they are supposed to be high, but in practice, as we all know, they are not. I am not satisfied that even a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce travelling with one animal, particularly a veal calf, from a Scottish island to the Scottish mainland for eight hours—if that is how long it takes—would be satisfactory.

The issue of veal calves, which has been referred to on a number of occasions, sadly arises from a pyrrhic victory that some of us thought we had won: the banning of veal crates in the United Kingdom. That simply proves that we do not solve a problem by moving it from A to B. That is as true of the testing of cosmetics on live animals as it is of this issue of veal calves. The British market has singularly failed to promote and sell rose veal, as it is known. Veal calves that were raised in the United Kingdom are being shipped under appalling conditions, for very many hours, from Scotland or wherever to mainland Europe, where they are reared in the dark and fed on milk under infinitely worse conditions than they ever had in the United Kingdom. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire says that we have made it worse, and he is absolutely right—I said it was a pyrrhic victory. That has to be addressed, but not by shipping those animals to Europe to have them raised in sheds in Belgium, Holland, France or wherever, to produce white veal for Wiener schnitzel or whatever. We must consider that matter.

The crux of this issue—as it happens, this was highlighted on the BBC’s “Countryfile” yesterday—is the shortage of abattoir facilities, which arose way back when we shut half our abattoirs and slaughterhouses because we tried to gold-plate European regulations. We have heard that some facilities are no longer available, and that is absolutely right: we have taken away a lot of facilities, particularly in the Scottish islands. The answer, which I would like the Minister to address, is first to preserve local facilities where they still exist.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I am a crofter who sells lambs every autumn because I run out of grazing. We have a slaughterhouse on the island, but slaughtering lambs at their different weights and then selling them on is beyond me—it is beyond all crofters—because some are too small to be slaughtered. About half need to go away for further fattening. Even if we had more slaughterhouses, it still would not work. Lambs would still have to be exported off the island, or else there would be a bigger welfare problem: lack of food.

[Sir Roger Gale]

The hon. Gentleman has greater expertise in this narrow field than me, particularly since he farms. I accept that point, but I do not accept that it is necessary to send those animals to the south of England, which is an eight, 10 or 12-hour journey once they hit the mainland—and he first ships them from the island to the mainland United Kingdom. Even the journey to the south of Britain is very long, but if they are shipped across the channel and then halfway across Europe to Spain, which is what happens, the journey is infinitely longer. I do not accept that that is a necessity. I might accept that there is a case for moving them to the Scottish lowlands for fattening if that is what the economics of the trade demand.

I accept again that there is no one-size-fits-all solution and that the local abattoir might not work for everyone all the time. However, we have beset our slaughterhouses not with animal welfare regulations, which I support, but with all manner of other red tape, which is putting them out of business. The Minister needs to address that. Frankly, they are on the borderline of not being able to make a living. Far from closing those local facilities, we need to reinstate them and provide more local facilities so that, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay said, animals can be slaughtered as close to the point of production as possible. That is the key. That is why I do not accept the argument put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire that this is just a matter of raising transport standards and ensuring that everything is gold-plated in the United Kingdom. As he said himself—I made this point during his speech—the moment an animal leaves these shores, it is out of our control. I see no justification in this day and age for transporting animals alive rather than on the hook.

The Minister will know that people have said, “Ah yes, but the French have a different way of butchering meat.” That is absolutely true, but it is not beyond the wit of man—before we leave the European Union, at least—to hire a French butcher or someone else who can butcher for the French. In fact, it is already done. The idea that something can be shipped across the channel, spend a couple of days in a French field and be whacked off down to the Rungis meat market and sold as French beef, lamb or whatever is a nonsense.

I see no justification whatsoever for the transport of live animals for slaughter. I see every reason why we should take the opportunity, upon leaving the European Union, to ban the transport of live animals—that includes horses, by the way—for purposes other than breeding. I applaud the measures that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has trailed, and I hope very much that we will introduce them as soon as possible.