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8.13 pm
Sir Colin Shepherd (Hereford): In my capacity as Chairman of the Select Committee on Catering, I should report that there appears to be no fall-off in the consumption of beef among hon. Members. That is not a moment of levity, but an important statement on how we in the House feel.
Hereford and beef are very much synonymous. I took time out today to go to Herefordshire to talk with people there because I wanted to get some first-hand feedback.I spoke to butchers, the public generally, meat processors and farmers. I have heard about all the knock-on effects and will not weary the House by repeating them. I want to tell the Labour party with all the strength that I can muster that there is massive resentment of the politicisation of the issue. Asking why it cannot be sorted out on a common-sense basis instead of it being hyped up was the common thread of what was said to me. That is very important, and I hope that the Labour party hears it.
The second point made to me concerned the strong resentment of the worldwide ban that has been imposed by the European Commission. That really hurts. People ask what confidence we have that the imported beef constitutes less risk. I have had the pleasure of serving on the council of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons for the past 13 years and I have the highest regard for the UK veterinary profession. I do not have quite the same regard for some of the profession's members on the European side of the channel. That does not in any way reduce my European credentials; it is just a matter of perception.
I also want to know what confidence we can have in the imported product. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) mentioned that important point in his discourse on McDonald's. I happen to disagree with some amount of what he says about McDonald's, but that is another matter. When my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister attends the emergency Council of Agriculture Ministers this weekend, I want him to demand a wide-ranging review of EU countries' farming practices. I do not think that they are all whiter than white. The problem is wider than the UK. We must know that we are
all playing on the same field. I am also asked why we have to take imports of white veal when we do not even agree with the practices adopted in the rearing of those animals.
Confidence-building measures are what we are about tonight. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East(Dr. Strang) remarked on the point and I agree with him on it. There are three very important areas. First, it is absolutely fundamental that farmers take scrupulous care in reporting anything worrisome. Secondly, the figures quoted about abattoir operators are alarming, and it is vital that the public should have confidence that meat is handled scrupulously in abattoirs. Thirdly, there should also be confidence in the Meat Hygiene Service inspection. Those three elements are very important, and can be implemented by the industry itself.
My right hon. and learned Friend has brought forward measures today, but there is a big gap on the question of cull cows, to which other hon. Members have referred. The package is not yet complete. Until a measure on cull cows is in place, it will be difficult to assess any increase in the underlying confidence of the market, the producers and the public. I urge my right hon. and learned Friend to press ahead on that issue as fast as he possibly can, because we need to know where we stand.
Other points that have already been raised relate to the engendering of BSE-free herds. Although not all herds have been affected, a number that are BSE-free may be so only by the grace of God. We need to develop incentives to finish beef cattle particularly on grass rather than cake. I declare a small interest, in that the Hereford breed of cattle is particularly good at finishing on grass rather than on cake compared with some of its continental successors. The breed has been under threat for some time because of its inability to put on quite the same amount of weight per day as the Charolais or the Limousin, but it is a first-class breed in terms of putting on weight on grass at the finish. It will be helpful if we can encourage finishing on grass as part of the overall package.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food made an important announcement about renderers today. However, I have some questions on that. They need not necessarily be answered today, but I would welcome a letter. First, does the £1.5 million a week to the rendering industry take into account the volume of offal produced by the poultry industry? That is a very relevant question, as an immense amount of offal is produced as part of the poultrymeat production process. If the figure does not take that offal into account, we must rethink the matter.
Secondly, an order is being produced today for consultation. Will the consultees include the poultry industry, which is all part of the same scene? Thirdly, will the order contain provision for a review mechanism to take into account future developments in rendering, offal handling and the continuing scientific debate?
Mrs. Audrey Wise (Preston):
I may technically have an indirect interest to declare, inasmuch as I am president of the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. My overriding interest is in the health of the population and in the interests of all consumers. I do not accept that our prime objective should be the restoration of confidence in the market, because I believe that the objective must be the protection of public health. Furthermore, unless the public are assured that health is the prime objective, whatever we do with the aim of restoring confidence, we shall fail. The perception that what is being done is intended to protect public health is the first prerequisite of any reassurance or any restoration of confidence.
There has been Government ineptitude for some years. The crisis would have been far less likely to arise if there had been firmer action earlier and if there had been more humility in the face of our massive ignorance. People are tired of hearing bland statements that everything is safe and that the risks are extremely small--statements which are clearly born out of ignorance and which have had to be contradicted from time to time, most recently on20 March.
There has been order after order after order; the chronology of events is long. Each order has made certain progress and has introduced certain regulations, but there has always been a tiny step at a time. That approach is inadequate.
I do not want there to be a panic in that all herds are assumed to be the same. I am sorry that some people feel that because there is such widespread BSE, all our herds are infected. However, I believe that any slaughter policy we institute--I believe that there will have to be such a policy--must differentiate between one herd and another. There are differences which probably result from how cattle have been cared for, reared and fed; there are different practices. That must be acknowledged, because the different practices have led to different results. It should not just be the case that cows over a certain age are slaughtered. If we are to have recognisably BSE-free herds, our objective must be to distinguish between one herd and another.
It has been said that we do not need to rake over the past. However, one person's raking over the past might be another person's learning from the past. We must learn severe lessons from the lack of enforcement of the regulations on abattoirs. Regulations that are not properly implemented and are not enforced are simply a false reassurance; we are now paying the price for all the false reassurance.
It is extraordinary that there has been such complacency about the huge failure to comply with the regulations. How can we be assured that future stronger regulations will be complied with when milder regulations have not been complied with in the past? One important way to ensure compliance would have been to treat the non-compliers with great severity. Why have there been no prosecutions? The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has said that prosecutions would have made it a criminal matter. Exactly. It is a criminal matter not to have complied with regulations imposed on the handling of meat and meat products in the interests of public safety. If people who did not comply had been criminalised and
had paid a penalty, there would have been a lot more compliance a lot sooner, and people would have a lot more confidence in future regulations. That is an important matter.
The sheer extent of BSE in the herds has astonished and worried people. The fact that, as at 23 February, there were 158,277 cases is very worrying. As at July 1993, there were 100,000 confirmed cases, which means that in the past two and a half years, and a long time after the ban on feeding ruminant remains to ruminants, there have been almost 60,000 more cases. That is why consumers do not have confidence, and who can blame them?
We need a frank acknowledgement, as some hon. Members have made, of the extent of human ignorance in this matter. We do not know for sure how the disease is transmitted and we do not even know whether it has come from scrapie. We do not know why sheep convey scrapie to lambs, and why cows do not convey BSE to calves. We cannot know whether humans will convey it to babies. It is time that we stopped just saying that everything is safe and that we admitted our great ignorance. Paradoxically, that would help to create confidence. Bland reassurance works for a time, but it then becomes utterly self-defeating. That is what has happened, and that is what is still happening.
One good thing that was not generally known until a recent parliamentary answer to one of my hon. Friends is that vaccine serum from British cattle was discontinued in 1989. The chief medical officer admitted that there was no actual evidence of risk, but he said that it seemed prudent to take that action. He thought that the industry itself would want to eliminate any theoretical risk.
That is a sensible attitude. If we wait for proof, it will be too late. Positive proof in such cases is not the same as negative proof, whereby we could all simply say,"It has all worked out well, has it not?" By the time we have positive proof of all the dangers, it will be too late, and we may face something uncontrollable.
I hope, and I think that I believe, that at this stage the situation is still controllable, and that it would be possible to have a BSE-free herd. I am not a vegetarian;I personally want to be able to have confidence about eating beef. Of course, I would have a lot more confidence in cattle fed on the things on which animals should be fed--those that eat grass and similar natural products. Those are the kind of cattle that we should have, and I think that they are more likely to be found free of BSE.
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