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Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Hear, hear.
Mr. Kennedy: My hon. Friend was also at the meeting. The Minister of Agriculture was asked for some proposals for a framework to deal with the problem so that the Commission could respond. Apparently, in one of the Minister's more notable utterances, he said that he had some proposals, but he was not at liberty to tell the European Commission what they were. That is hardly the way to make friends and influence people in Brussels. Christopher Tugendhat, a former Conservative Commissioner, commented, as the beef crisis mounted, that a similar problem had arisen, when he was a Commissioner, in the French agricultural sector. The French Agriculture Minister went straight to Brussels, told the Commission what the problem was, drew up a set of guidelines to deal with it and went back to his national Parliament with a framework for action. We have not had that resolute, decisive approach from the Government and especially not from the Ministry of Agriculture.
The outcome is ironic. The Prime Minister said yesterday:
Mr. Kennedy:
Time is too short to give way.
It is ironic that the Prime Minister was driven by the Euro-sceptics to a policy of intransigence and that the outcome has been to hand still more power and authority over the management of our beef industry to Brussels. The lack of leadership from the Prime Minister, who has been buffeted and driven by the Conservative Euro-sceptics, has concentrated more power in Brussels than before.
Another result of the whole sorry episode is that we must consider the future status of the Ministry of Agriculture. We have argued before--and the issue of BSE has underlined our approach--that the Ministry's important work in representing producer interests should
be separated from the need to reassure consumers about food safety and hygiene standards. It was depressing that public opinion was, at times, more likely to believe the chief executive of McDonald's than the Secretary of State for Health or the Minister of Agriculture. The need for a free-standing food safety commission is all the more pressing in the light of what we have learned from the BSE experience.
My final point concerns the situation in Scotland and I echo the first comments made by the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh). I hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to tell us in her winding-up speech how much progress has been made by the working group on the Scottish quality beef initiative. The working group has been co-chaired by Highlands and Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise and it is hoped that it will report in the next few weeks. Any further information from the Parliamentary Secretary about the attempts to re-establish the Scottish sector of the market would be useful and timely.
Mr. Nicholas Budgen (Wolverhampton, South-West):
I begin by declaring an interest because I own a small beef herd. I make no apology for speaking in the debate because my constituents, who are urban dwellers, have an interest in the large cost of the deal with Europe, which they will have to fund, and they also wish to know that the beef they eat is safe and healthy.
The attack launched by the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) started with the dubious proposition that his party would have got a better deal. The deal is not especially attractive and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) that the size of the cull is enormous and that the disruption, cruelty and sheer waste of killing productive animals early in their life is horrible to contemplate. I agree also that the timetable is neither specific nor satisfactory, but no one can possibly argue that they know that any better deal would have been available: that is the crucial point.
Our beef, for better or for worse, has been excluded from most of the markets in the civilised world. It has been banned, for instance, from America since 1989, but we have not had the opportunity to exercise a non-co-operation policy against America. It looked at one point as though we would not be able to export our beef at all, even after a big cull and after meeting the unsatisfactory timetable.
The policy of non-co-operation has distinguished the Government's behaviour in the past few weeks. As I suppose Mr. Gerry Adams would say, force does work. It may be a rough old world, but by saying that we shall not co-operate we have half opened the door for our beef. If the European Union becomes awkward again about the details our culling programme or the details of the timetabling, we too can cut up rough and reintroduce the non-co-operation policy.
It is possible for me to say that because I am not a Euro-enthusiast. I do not believe in a federal Europe, but the Liberal Democrats are the most Euro-enthusiastic, so it seems rather difficult for them, since they almost certainly would not have used the policy of non-co-operation, to argue that they would have got a better deal. It is only by being awkward that we have got the deal, expensive and unsatisfactory though it may be. But for our awkwardness and bloody-mindedness, the door would not have been even half opened.
The Labour party says, with the benefit of hindsight, that many more expensive and bureaucratic measures should have been exercised, particularly in the abattoirs and feed mills. For the benefit of my urban constituents, let me use my own personal knowledge. When I used to go to Lichfield and Uttoxeter markets, I was constantly told how expensive, boring and unnecessary was the intervention of the various inspectors as a result of the European regulations, how disgraceful it was that small abattoirs were being forced to close and so on. Most constituency Members of Parliament were asking for their constituents to be relieved from such a gross and expensive intrusion.
It is all very well the Labour party saying that it rather likes inspectors in abattoirs, state-employed vets and lots of public expenditure, but that would not have been necessary in the past. The position has changed, as a result of which more expenditure must be incurred to get our beef into Europe. As one who has not always been very gushing about the Government's performance, I cannot see how the Ministry of Agriculture can legitimately be criticised on this occasion. I hope that, whenever necessary, we shall exercise our rights within the Community to use the veto. That is what General de Gaulle did, it is what Mrs. Thatcher did and it has been very effective on this occasion.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
As one of the remaining four Labour Members of Parliament who voted with the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Sir E. Heath) to go into the Community, I could not disagree more with the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen). This is an absolutely crazy way to treat our European partners. It is counterproductive and will be extremely costly for our country in years to come.
I want to concentrate simply on the science of the issue and to ask a number of questions.
My first is to repeat that put by my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) concerning the clustering of CJD in Kent. I understand that an animal waste rendering company defended its methods of treating
the carcases of cattle killed in the BSE cull, including its use of waste effluent as fertiliser on nearby land. A director of Canterbury Mills, one of nine rendering plants appointed by the Government, said that he was working to Ministry guidelines. The company was reacting to a warning from a neurologist that the discharge of infected material could be linked to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
Alan Colchester, a consultant at Guy's hospital in London, made an investigation after learning that there had been three suspected cases of CJD in the Ashford area where the plant is based. He said:
I simply want to ask what the Government are doing about Dr. Colchester's findings. He is a serious man and, if he is right, all sorts of consequences flow.
Secondly, on 1 May 1996, in a question to the Minister of Agriculture, I asked:
In 1988, two years after BSE was first identified, epidemiologists in Britain working for MAFF announced that the source was probably scrapie. They linked the emergence of BSE with changes in the solvents and temperature used at the rendering plants recovering protein from animal carcases to produce cattle feed. Therefore, I ask whether the Ames, Iowa work has been followed up.
Thirdly, a simple test has been developed in the United States which might soon allow British farmers to identify cattle infected with mad cow disease. By looking in spinal fluid for "indicator" proteins--130 and 131--American researchers have been able to diagnose the closely related human disease, CJD, with more than 98 per cent. accuracy. They say that the technique would work equally well with infected cows. Is that the Department's view?
My fourth question arises from discussions with Professor Peter Wilson, the former head of Bush research campus, who believes from his many contacts that it is highly likely that the source of the trouble could be prions that were not heated to the extent that they used to be.
To cut a long and complicated story short, the renderers, in order to preserve proteins in the food that is produced, are now doing their business at lower temperatures than they used to. It is possible that, when that was done at higher temperatures, many of the potentially disease-carrying organisms were eliminated. If temperature is reduced with the aim of improving the quality of the protein, side-risks may be run. I do not know what the answer is, but what is the latest thinking of the Minister's advisers?
Fifthly, let me again raise a matter that I raised in an intervention on the Minister's speech. I refer to a letter, signed by the Minister--or, rather, by Elizabeth Ratcliffe; I make no complaint about that--to Lord Marlesford, whom many of us knew for years as Mark Schreiber, a distinguished political editor of The Economist. According to the letter,
The letter continues:
"The targets that we have set are ambitious."
He was correct about that. He continued:
"It is now up to us in this country--the farming and ancillary industries and the Government--to ensure that we meet them. The point is that this timetable is essentially in our hands."--[Official Report, 24 June 1996; Vol. 280, c. 22.]
Wrong. The timetable is essentially in Brussels' hands, because we have to provide verification to Brussels of every step that we take.
"The area should be fenced off. It will take years to see if any part of the land is affected, so no sort of human trespassing should be allowed."
Dr. Colchester is working with the East Kent health authority to investigate possible links between the local CJD cases. The company has twice been convicted of effluent discharge offences during the past three years.
"Could we return to the desperately important question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) about the United Kingdom's scientific infrastructure? What is happening with the central veterinary laboratory, the central science laboratory and the neuropathogens laboratory in Edinburgh and the cuts in work that may be vital in identifying the root cause of the problem? The last time that he was at the Dispatch Box, the Minister said very courteously that he would look at the experiments conducted in Ames, Iowa, involving proteins 130 and 131, and the question of prions in sub-heated food."
The Minister's answer is a matter of record. He said:
"we have increased MAFF spending on research by £1 million."--[Official Report, 1 May 1996; Vol. 276, c. 1158-9.]
Is it still the opinion of Professor Pattison that enough money and resources are being devoted to research? I asked whether experiments conducted in Ames, Iowa, had been followed up because in a barn in Ames, Iowa, there is a herd of cows that could force epidemiologists to rethink the origin of BSE. The barn is a secure isolation unit and, since 1990, it has housed a series of experiments whereby tissue from the brains of sheep with scrapie, a related disease, has been injected into cattle. The results are consistent. Cows infected with the scrapie agent become sick, but the disease is not recognisable as BSE.
"There seems to have been a misunderstanding. The main step to protect animal health was the introduction of the 'ruminant feed ban' in 1988. This prohibited the feeding of cattle with ruminant protein, the source of the BSE infection. This ban has greatly reduced the number of BSE cases that have occurred."
Incidentally, I gave a copy of the letter to officials so that the Minister could refer to it.
"However, it has unfortunately not been totally effective, probably due to cross-contamination of ruminant feed with meat and bone meal from other animal feeds, both in feed mills and on farms."
That letter was written on 4 June. We are now nearing the end of the month. Has it become effective--totally effective--or is there still a problem? The letter goes on to say:
"The Government has, therefore, recently prohibited the use of meat and bone meal in any feed for farmed livestock, including poultry, fish, and horses. This removes the possibility of cattle getting access to any feed containing MBM which may potentially be contaminated. There is not a concern about pigs or poultry and other non-ruminant farm animals contracting BSE from feed, since in experiments feeding them with BSE infected brain has not produced disease in either pigs or poultry."
That brings us back to Ames, Iowa. It would be a serious matter if there were cross-contamination. I hope that the Minister will refer to the matter.
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