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Beef Industry
12.53 pm
Mr. Christopher Gill (Ludlow): I should like to preface my remarks by declaring a lifelong interest in the meat and livestock industry. I have no intention of saying anything in this debate that would justify scoring political points. For far too long, the food industry in general and the meat and livestock industry in particular has been used for political point-scoring. The House would do well to remember the devastating effect that that has had on the lives and livelihoods of the hundreds of thousands of men and women employed in those industries.
As an earnest of my good intent, I shall start by giving credit where credit is due. I applaud the Government's efforts to achieve a ban on specified risk material in all European Union abattoirs. That is necessary if the European beef industry is to be an integral part of the single market established on 1 January 1996. Common sense decrees that, given that SRM is perceived to harbour the bovine spongiform encephalopathy agent, it is right to ban SRM in all European abattoirs. That is a small but none the less welcome development. As that faint glimmer of light appears at the end of a long and dark tunnel, we should ask ourselves what lessons there are to be learnt for the future.
Never again must the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food or the Department of Health precipitate the sort of food scares seen in 1988 about salmonella in eggs and, more recently, in 1996 about BSE. Nor must Ministers of the Crown allow themselves to be stampeded into making pronouncements and taking actions that are not only unsupported by the facts but at odds with practical experience and common sense.
The House will recognise both the events to which I have referred as having occurred under a Conservative Government, but my message to Ministers is that they could just as easily occur under a Labour Administration, given that the sources of the advice that they receive are unchanged and that the civil servants who give the advice are, by and large, the same people who advised the previous Government.
Ministers should be asking not what additional legislation is necessary but what is the source of their advice, what is the quality of the advice that they receive, and what was the end result of following that advice. They should ask those questions against the background of the holocaust in the animal kingdom that has occurred as a result of following advice. Some 3.7 million head of poultry were compulsorily destroyed between March 1989 and June 1996. More than 1.5 million cattle have been needlessly destroyed in the past 15 months. I say needlessly, because there was no realistic prospect that salmonella could be eradicated and there is no proof or evidence that BSE causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. We must learn from those experiences. We must learn to understand the dynamics of the rather new phenomenon, the scare. We must recognise the risk of falling into the trap of feeling that something must be done when, more often than not, that action simply serves to confirm people's worst fears. In short, the hazard is that control measures may simply exacerbate the problems and have the opposite effect to what was intended.
Before I turn my attention to the future, I wish to highlight some of the industry's current concerns. The first is the phasing out of the rendering subsidy, which
will make beef dearer--the opposite of what is needed in present circumstances. British beef will become even less competitive with foreign imports at a time when the strong pound is creating problems enough. In that regard, the whole farming industry looks to the Government to reconsider their decision on agrimonetary aids. The phasing out of aid to renderers will also drive producers and processors out of business, to the long-term detriment of the nation's balance of payments and the livestock industry's future prosperity. It will precipitate the demise of the knackermen--those unloved and, to the European Union, unwanted people who, along with hunt kennels, provide the livestock farmer with an outlet for fallen and casualty stock, which would otherwise be buried on farm, with all the hazards that that implies.
Secondly, farmers are concerned about the reduction in payments under the over-30-months scheme, not least the arbitrary decision to impose a 560 kg ceiling. It appears that that decision has been made for political reasons, given that there has been no consultation with the industry and that there is no statistical evidence to support that cut-off point.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough):
On the subject of the OTMS, I should like to draw my hon. Friend's attention to a letter that a constituent of mine, Mr. John Wadland, received from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), in reply to his letter to MAFF in which he set out his concerns as a beef farmer about the reduction in the compensation payment. In that reply, dated 22 July, the junior Minister said:
Mr. Gill:
That is not the sort of letter that I would have written. I recall speaking in a debate in the previous Parliament on the subject of quality beef, when I was ruled out of order by the Chair for referring to suckler cows. We should take that lack of understanding of our industry seriously, because we have a lot of leeway to make up so that the public and, indeed, colleagues in the House of Commons understand what our industry entails.
On the subject of the OTMS, I am sure that my constituents would wish me to place on record the anger and frustration felt among Shropshire farmers. Incidentally, their cattle account for 5 per cent. of the nation's dairy herds and 4 per cent. of the nation's suckler herds. They are angry because there are no longer any abattoirs in the county contracted to handle OTMS stock.
Mr. Desmond Swayne (New Forest, West):
Will my hon. Friend comment on the fact that beef cattle in constituencies such as mine, which are effectively store cattle and are raised in open forest in the most ecological
Mr. Gill:
I understand my hon. Friend's question. There is a good case for Ministers to look again at the OTMS, to see whether it could be converted into an over-36-months scheme. That would give a little more headroom for the type of cattle production that my hon. Friend described. Given that the limit of 30 months was set arbitrarily, I believe that there is no obstruction to raising it to 36 months. I hope very much that the Minister will consider that.
As I said, in Shropshire there are no longer any abattoirs contracted to deal with OTMS cattle. Will the Minister reconsider his decision not to award a contract to F. M. Caine and Sons Ltd. of Ludlow, which may prove to be the last straw for that knacker business? That would result in serious repercussions on an area that is highly dependent on livestock.
Thirdly, I wish to relay the concerns felt by many of my farming constituents that the calf processing aid scheme is now working against the economics of the beef industry by putting a false bottom in the market, which militates against cost cutting and low inputs as a means of producing a competitive product.
As for the future, let me say at the outset that there is a future for an industry that produces one of the finest and most natural food products in the world. That product contains high-quality protein, important vitamins and vital minerals, which, as any nutritionist worth his salt would tell us, are essential ingredients in a healthy, balanced diet.
As the House knows, the first priority is to get the beef export ban lifted. In that connection, I seek the Minister's confirmation that Her Majesty's Government will, forthwith, as a matter of urgency, put a firm proposal to Brussels that beef from cattle born after 1 August 1996 should be exempt from current restrictions.
The second priority must surely be to restructure drastically the beef regime, so that the industry takes the all-important decisions about what should be produced, in what quantities and to what standards of quality. Those decisions should seen to be quite separate from the ones that Governments may or may not wish to take in relation to the future well-being of the countryside.
The ruination of the beef industry, BSE and other scares apart, has been the dead hand of the common agricultural policy, which has skewed production to the continental pattern of beef production. In other words, no subsidies are paid in this country on beef from heifers, which was always an important source of quality beef on the British market. Even now, the Agenda 2000 proposals seek to take that a stage further, by creating even bigger incentives to produce bull beef as opposed to the traditional steer beef. In the past, so much of our quality beef has come from steer cattle.
"With the greatest of respect I felt yours was a very silly letter. If you really feel that Dr. Cunningham"--
the Minister--
"who has represented beef and dairy farmers for decades in his rural constituency of Cumbria"--
his constituency is not Cumbria--
"does not understand the difference in a suckler herd and a dairy herd then you really need your head examining."
What hope do my farmers and my hon. Friend's farmers have when arrogant Ministers write such offensive, rude letters to farmers in trouble?
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