Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact global deforestation and desertification on the UK’s national food security, supply chains and food prices.

The UK imports 40% of its food and is therefore exposed to supply chain risks such as deforestation and desertification via food security and price impacts associated with food imports.

Defra routinely conducts and updates assessments on a range of threats. HMG pub-lishes assessments in the National Risk Register and Chronic Risks Analysis, includ-ing on biodiversity loss and its interactions with ecosystems, on gov.uk.

The Government is committed to supporting sustainable production, trade and use of deforestation linked products. The Joint Nature Conservation Committee, sponsored by Defra, have created the Global Environmental Impacts of Consumption indicator, an indicator which includes analysis of the impact of forest risk commodities in global supply chains. The indicator estimates that UK consumption drove 29,300 hectares of deforestation in 2023.