My Lords, I shall speak briefly to three of the amendments. Amendment 26, which I thoroughly support, reminds me of the situation when we went into government in 1997 and the department was MAFF; we are not talking about Defra. Jack, now my noble friend Lord Cunningham, who was the Minister, decided to split responsibility between me, on animal health in the middle of the BSE crisis, and Elliot Morley, on animal welfare. It was not creative tension, because we worked incredibly well together, but the fact is that these were two sides of the same coin—it is as simple as that. To separate them, it seemed self-evident to me, created a technical lacuna, and that should be corrected by accepting Amendment 26.
7 pm
On Amendment 44, I agree that outdoor livestock is idyllic—I will come to another aspect of that—but it will not give us enough food. We will run out of land; there will not be enough land for the animals. If you can do it, outdoor is better than indoor, but we cannot provide the food we need for our people if everything is outdoor.
Towards the end of his speech, the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, said that we caught bluetongue from the EU. I suppose technically he is correct, but I was the Minister responsible at the time in Defra, from 2006 to 2008; we were warned by the weather forecasters—it was an amazing exercise; the weather across the channel and the North Sea is watched incredibly closely—that a plume had left the coast of Belgium and Holland and was heading to the English coast in Suffolk. That plume brought bluetongue. You can argue that it came from continental Europe, but it came through the plume and the weather. I remember going to meet and congratulate the vet who discovered the first animals with bluetongue in Suffolk.
I thoroughly agree with every aspect of Amendment 68, which I consider the main amendment, but I would not want it to be looked at as an excuse to oppose intensive food production. I think, and have seen examples of this in the past, that you can have both. You can have intensive food production, which is called factory farming—people do not like factories; I
spent all my working life before I became an MP in factories, but not ones with animals—but it can be misused, and I would not want that.
I agree on battery cages. The supermarkets, which control a lot of the food sold in this country, have gone out of their way to make sure that eggs are produced in a much healthier, more environmentally friendly and welfare-friendly way than they used to be. Battery cages have gone. Colony cages are going and barn egg production is being introduced. I have sat in on meetings where suppliers have discussed with supermarkets how they will modify their process. It can be done, but it is in a building. It is called “factory farming”; that is the absolute reality.
There was reference earlier to chicken sheds. I do not know the current figure, but the one I always use is that we slaughter 800 million broilers, after, I think, 35 to 38 days, when they weigh a certain amount. We do it in about six factories, as far as I recall, so it is quite intensive production. I have been in the sheds with 20,000 broilers pecking on the floor, all free to move around. There is no odour; it is warm and light. On one occasion in such a shed the farmer said that they checked their welfare about every couple of hours. The way they do it in such a large shed is to make it all go quiet. He used a whistle; there were 20,000 chicks spread around on the floor—quite a lot of noise, as you can imagine—and this sound killed the noise stone dead. There was total silence, except for one chick which was coughing away. He said, “That’s how we spot whether there’s an animal not feeling well. Get the shed quiet and listen for the noises.”
I am not saying that it is like this all the time, but I am certain that the intensive producers are very conscious that they want to produce welfare-friendly food. We may not like the look of it—it is not free range—but the fact is that there are 800 million of them. You can always tell people—I used to say it as well—of chicken sandwiches bought in London that that chicken was raised, slaughtered and cooked in Vietnam or Thailand.
That was the reality and probably still is for a lot of chicken today. The margins are infinitesimal in the poultry industry; if it is tuppence per kilogram, I would be amazed. So, there is an issue here. I live in Shropshire. I have not been in any chicken sheds in Shropshire, although I have walked past some—I have not been in any in Herefordshire either, by the way—but I am in favour of using our land to produce as much of our food as possible, whether in glasshouses, polytunnels or sheds. We have loads of land that we can still use as countryside.
My final point is on antibiotics. I know to my certain knowledge that some of the big supermarkets have run schemes to cut down on their use. It is in their interest to do so and they want to be able to boast that there is a reduction from their suppliers. I have sat in on meetings between supermarkets and suppliers where this has been discussed. One area where there seemed to be a big issue was game. I am a bit out of date; it was about three years ago, and I have lost a year. I am not attacking the game industry, but there was an excessive use of antibiotics in that industry.
I know there have been reductions, but I agree entirely with Amendment 68. I do not think we should pay farmers to produce food following the practices
listed in Amendment 68. They have to be eradicated. However, I would not want this to be used to say, “Well, this is the case, therefore we should have everything outdoors, everything free range, nothing inside a building”. If that is the case, we will not be able to provide for our people, inside or outside the EU.