Sustainable Livestock Bill

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Friday 12th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

At the outset of his commendable comments, the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) made the very important point that food and farming are too little debated in this House. I hope that the Backbench Business Committee will help to ensure that at least one day a year is devoted to a debate on food and farming.

I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate for a number of reasons. I am the last surviving Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Minister in the House of Commons. In the general election immediately preceding the Great Reform Act, the Conservative candidate for Banbury had a four-word election address: “God speed the plough.” When I was first elected, Banbury had the largest cattle market in Europe. I am interested in this debate as a north Oxfordshire representative and former MAFF Minister, but I am also a former chair of the Select Committee on International Development and I was co-chair, with Lord Ewen Cameron, of the all-party group on agriculture and food for development.

How we ensure sustainable livestock is a complex issue, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) on introducing the Bill, which is clearly of interest to a large number of our constituents. I am not sure that we can do the topic justice collectively in the comparatively short period that we have for today’s debate, or individually in the time that each of us realistically and reasonably has to speak.

I note that the Bill has the support of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust, of which I am a member. When I completed 25 years service in this House, my local constituency association presented me with two Gloucester old spot sows—affectionately named Hazel and Harriet—and I think that a paragraph in the RBST’s summarises why a number of people involved in agriculture and farming believe that the Bill might be helpful:

“The Rare Breeds Survival Trust is supporting this Bill because it calls for a strategic approach to livestock farming. The Bill would ensure that policies aimed at reducing the global impact of livestock production will give farmers in the UK an opportunity to maximise the use of extensive grazing systems, including using traditional breeds which will not only reduce our reliance on imported soy, but also greatly reduce the carbon footprint of livestock production, deliver benefits for wild life in the UK and support upland farmers who are protecting upland habitats and landscapes.”

No hon. Members will have any quarrel with that aspiration, but the question is this: do we need more regulation and more legislation to achieve a strategic approach to livestock farming, or do we trust farmers to continue to seek to improve farming’s environmental impact?

I note that coincidental with the Prime Minister’s recent visit to China, we exported a large number of breeding sows to China—they were not Gloucester old spots, alas, but high-pedigree UK pigs. We should not forget during this debate that standards of animal husbandry in the UK are among the best in the world.

However, I should observe that I got the impression from some of the letters, e-mails and briefing papers that I received before the debate that the main motivation of some of the supporters of the hon. Gentleman’s Bill is that they are either inclined to be anti-farmer or opposed to livestock farming as a concept. That is a pity. Such an approach is short sighted, because farmers here and elsewhere in the world have an important role to play in ensuring that we have the food that we need and that it is produced in such a way that we can pass on this planet to succeeding generations at least in a condition in which we would ourselves have hoped to have inherited it.

In that respect, there is a very real difficulty with the Bill. I get the impression that some supporters of the Bill seem to think that its provisions will achieve objectives that are not entirely clear. In e-mails that I have received, it has been suggested that those objectives include a ban on large dairies, an enforced reduction in meat and dairy in people’s diets, and the setting up of trade barriers on imported animal feed. I assume that that follows from references in the Bill to the use of subsidies or grants to encourage or discourage the use of particular practices, methods, feeds and crops; the use of taxes or levies to encourage or discourage use of particular practices, methods, feeds and crops; and the use of public information campaigns to encourage or discourage particular consumer behaviour.

I get the clear impression that some people hope that the Bill will do things that it is not immediately clear will be achieved. However, the ambiguity of the provisions and the confusion of aspiration about what the Bill intends may well cause more confusion than constructive engagement.

We live in a world of rapidly growing population, and those people need to be fed. The population is also becoming increasingly urban. In a comparatively short time, more of the population of Africa will live in major cities than will live in the countryside. It is also important to recall that more than 200 million people in Africa—more than one in four of the continent’s population—suffer chronic hunger.

I am glad that the Government have reaffirmed their commitment to the L’Aquila food security initiative, which was agreed at the G8 summit in 2009. The agreement aims to increase food production in developing countries, making food more affordable for the poorest and most vulnerable, create wealth and lift the poor out of poverty. Within the G20, the UK has committed to improving food security by making agricultural trade and markets function more effectively and reducing food price volatility, in order to protect those most vulnerable to food price increases, and I am glad to note that next year the UK Government will be publishing a major new foresight review of the future of farming and food, which will consider how the world can continue to feed itself sustainably and equitably over the next 40 years.

However, as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development pertinently observed in a debate earlier this week on food security in Africa:

“Agriculture is a private sector activity”—

the point that the hon. Member for North Antrim made—

“whether it involves subsistence farmers, smallholders…or large-scale commercial farming. The bulk of the investment needed to ramp up productivity will come from the private sector: from farmers’ own pockets, from banks and micro-credit agencies and from local and national investors.”—[Official Report, 9 November 2010; Vol. 518, c. 62WH.]

We live in a world challenged by climate change—a world where ease and globalisation of transport means that it is possible to transmit human and infectious diseases globally within a very short time span. Climate change means that there is often increasing competition for resources. For example, to those of us who have witnessed at first-hand the tragedy of Darfur, it is clear that much of that tragedy happened as a consequence of the Sahara desert moving inexorably onwards from Chad into neighbouring Sudan, and resulting in a conflict for land between nomads who have traditionally driven their cattle across the country and farmers using land to grow crops.

I do not think there is any dispute that livestock production contributes to climate change by making greenhouse gases either directly, such as from enteric fermentation, or indirectly, from feed production activities or the consequences of deforestation that creates new pasture. However, I think we do need to put this in perspective. The Food and Agriculture Organisation has concluded that, taken together in a food chain approach, livestock contribute about 9% of total anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. However, that also means that the livestock sector has an enormous potential to contribute to climate change mitigation. That will clearly require research and development of new mitigating technology—technologies to mitigate greenhouse emissions and the improved ability to monitor, report and verify emissions from livestock production.

I think we need to reflect that livestock are very often key assets held by poor people, particularly in food-insecure systems. Livestock often fulfil a number of economic, social and risk management functions. Indeed, for many poor people the loss of their livestock assets means that they decline into chronic poverty, with long-term effects on their livelihoods. So while of course there is understandable concern about some livestock production becoming more intensified to exploit economies of scale along the supply chain and concern about livestock hotspots, such as Amazonian ranches, and a trend of deforestation to provide more land for cattle or land for soya to feed cattle, there are also trade-offs in the increased efficiency of production; but those trade-offs have to be set against the implications for natural resource use, and adding a small amount of animal-based foods to a predominantly plant-based diet can yield large improvements in maternal health and child development.

Livestock contribute 40% of the global value of agricultural output and support the livelihoods and food security of almost a billion people. Indeed, livestock provide food for at least 830 million food-insecure people and in many developing countries livestock are a valuable asset, serving as a store of wealth, collateral for credit and an essential safety net during times of crisis, with outputs making a sizeable contribution to cash income.

We also need to recall that livestock are very often central to a mixed farming system. They consume waste products from crop and food production. Livestock help to control insects and weeds. They produce manure for fertilising fields and they provide draught power for ploughing and transport. I have a vivid recollection of seeing farmers in the highlands of Ethiopia using draught cattle to pull their ploughs to give them strength to enable them to use fairly basic wooden ploughs to plough very rocky marginal land. And, of course, livestock produce milk.

At the global level, livestock contribute some 15% of total food energy and 25% of dietary protein, and indeed products from livestock provide essential nutrients that are not easily obtained from plant-based foods. So although I appreciate that there are many people who for ethical reasons do not wish to eat meat, and although those who wish to be vegetarian or vegan must of course be free to do so—I have two vegetarians and a vegan in my close family—I think it is wholly unrealistic for those who have an instinctive, ethical or intellectual opposition to livestock production to think that the world is going to abandon cattle, goat, pig or poultry production.

We have to maximise the sustainable benefits of livestock production and minimise the risks, as far as possible, and the damage that some livestock production is doing to the planet. Reducing the risks, of course, also means reducing the risks to animal and human health. I do not wish to be alarmist, but the World Organisation for Animal Health estimates that 70% of all newly emerging infectious human diseases originate in animals. At least half of the known causes of infectious diseases in humans have a reservoir in animals, and about three quarters of new diseases that have affected humans over the past 10 years are caused by pathogens originating from products of animal origin.

It is in all our interests that there should be a sustained investment in developing countries to reduce the risk to human health, and we need to think how we might enhance the capacity of poorer countries to participate in the design of better animal health and food safety standards, although I think we should always recall that it is always the poor who are at the greatest risk here. Poor people are more likely to be chronically affected by health problems that have been caused by contact with sick animals, such as brucellosis or internal parasites, and for many of the poorest families livestock disease is particularly damaging because it threatens the very asset that they use for dealing with other crises.

[Mr Nuttall]

On that point about poorer people being adversely affected, I think there is a real risk inherent in the Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree that because the Bill could increase the cost of meat, poorer people might have a worse diet?

[Tony Baldry]

The hon. Member for North Antrim raised the very sound point that if the Bill becomes law, it may well have an effect that we have seen all too often: if one creates perversities in the UK agricultural marketplace, very often it simply results in our importing foodstuffs that have been produced in parts of the world that do not have our animal welfare standards.

We need to work with farmers and agriculture Ministers in developing countries to enhance their capacity to meet the human risks associated with livestock diseases. The most serious health threat is that of a human pandemic, and that was recently highlighted by the outbreak of a new strain of influenza A—H1N1—which contains genetic material from human, swine and poultry viruses. So it is fully understandable at a time of growing population pressure and growing urbanisation that the production of livestock, particularly pigs and poultry, is becoming more intensive, more geographically concentrated, more vertically integrated and more linked with global supply chains. But all that also has risks and what we need to be doing is maximising the potential for livestock to contribute to poverty alleviation and minimising the risks. We also need to improve food security, increase the sustainability of natural resource use and improve efforts to manage animal diseases.

I do not think that anyone challenges the need for the livestock sector to improve its environmental performance; this is about how to use resources more efficiently and how to capture the waste that livestock generate and turn it into resources. What we need, so far as is possible, is what economists would describe as producers and consumers internalising both the positive and negative factors generated by the livestock sector, so that producers and consumers pay the real price of the impacts of livestock production on natural resources and the environment and we do not steal land from, and degrade land for, future generations.

I do not believe anyone would challenge the concept that the livestock sector should seek to ensure its development is as environmentally sustainable as possible. That will require investment in agricultural research and appropriate actions along the food chain. What we are seeking to achieve is not that we campaign against farmers or producers but that we have a sustainable livestock industry, both in this country, and elsewhere in Europe and the world. But that gives rise to the question: do we need primary legislation to achieve such outcomes?

In effect, what the Bill’s supporters are saying is that Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs should come forward with a Government-drafted and Government-devised regulatory framework to impose on the UK livestock sector. I have to say to my colleagues, particularly those on the Government Benches, that it would be considered very strange at a time when we are, in general, seeking to reduce red tape, to deregulate and, wherever possible, to reduce the burden of regulation, if we were to seek, by primary legislation, to set up a maximalist regulatory framework for Ministers to seek to regulate every livestock farmer in the United Kingdom. I suspect that if this Bill were to get into Committee, the contradictions inherent within its wording would become more apparent the more one considered it line by line and clause by clause.

The previous Government became increasingly disingenuous on private Members’ Bills to which they may have been opposed—supporting or allowing them through on Second Reading and then seeking, in effect, to talk them out on Report and Third Reading. That was disingenuous, because if one does not support a Bill, one should not vote for it on Second Reading. I do not think that Members of Parliament collectively would support the introduction of a wholesale new regulatory regime at the moment for any other sector of UK business or commercial activity, so why would they support one for farming and agriculture?

I wish to make another point about the Bill and today’s debate. The Bill is a piece of a primary legislation that has been presented to the House and it contains five clauses. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), who introduced it, spoke for just 10 minutes in support of it. The Bill lists 10 sponsors, but with three honourable exceptions—my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), for Crawley (Henry Smith) and for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)—none has been present during the course of this debate. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) put in a fleeting appearance at the start of the debate and then disappeared, but not a sign has been seen of the other sponsors: the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George); my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone); the right hon. Members for Cardiff South and Penarth (Alun Michael), for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) and for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher); and my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Peter Bottomley). A fundamental principle is involved here, because if those who sponsor a private Members’ Bill do not even consider it worth while to attend and speak during the debate in support of the Bill and its promoter feels able to speak for only 10 minutes in support of it, that gives very little confidence to the rest of the House that the Bill should be supported in the Lobby.

However, I also think that today’s debate, and a number of the interventions made during it, send a very clear message to UK farmers and the farming industry that they have to do a lot more to explain what they are doing with initiatives such as the greenhouse gas action plan, the beef and sheep road map, and the encouragement of sustainable soya production in Brazil and elsewhere. I am sure that farmers are, and want to be, part of the solution. Today’s debate shows that in the minds of all too many, present-day agriculture is part of the problem, and only farmers and the farming community can demonstrate that they are genuinely committed to responsible animal husbandry and sustainable livestock production.