Agricultural Transition Plan

Viscount Thurso Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

I absolutely accept the noble Lord’s point. I want to make sure that my language is correct, because there are a lot of conspiracy theories at the extremes; then there are the absolutely genuine points made by people such as the noble Lord, who want, quite rightly, to ensure that they are addressed.

Although a novel pathogen—a disease or parasite—has not been identified, the experts concluded that it could explain the key observations, including mortality, over a sustained period along a 70-kilometre coastline. The report makes clear the unusual twitching of dying crabs and the deaths being predominantly among crabs rather than other species, and it concluded that a novel pathogen is as likely as not to be the cause.

That leads us to ask, “What now?”, which is why we are talking to Cefas to make sure that we are monitoring this issue. We are also talking to the IFCA about the measures that it brought in and making sure that we are drawing on the evidence of citizen science and other scientific organisations—some of which have understandably been taking part in campaigns on this. We recognise that, as yet, we do not precisely know what the cause is, but we want to.

[Viscount Thurso (LD)]

My Lords, on the hypothesis that the cause is indeed a novel pathogen, the Minister will know that in respect of red belly disease in salmon the original hypothesis was a novel pathogen, but the hypothesis now is an existing pathogen with a novel stressor. Has the review looked at the possibility of an existing pathogen caused by a new stress element? If not, why not? Does the Minister agree that that should be looked at?

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

The noble Viscount makes a very good point. One of the things that the review looked at was what was going on in the sea at the time. He is absolutely right that there are factors that can affect species and their ability to withstand a pathogen if such a pathogen exists. Those factors can include storm and tide effects and other human effects; they were certainly considered as part of the review and will be considered in any future reviews of this work.