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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason her Department's study into cage-based breeding of game birds does not include a control group of birds living in a natural environment.

The purpose of the project was to inform policy and the wording of the statutory code of practice for the welfare of gamebirds reared for sporting purposes on the effects of any change in practice from rearing in pens to cages. A comparison with birds living in a natural environment would not have informed this question.