Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MR PETER
STEVENSON
10 JUNE 2003
Q40 Mr Mitchell: It is no good saying
stall and tether is that kind of a barrier and sterling is that
kind of barrier, there were two barriers and they were complaining
about both.
Mr Stevenson: It was a very minor
one and figure after figure, including from the Meat and Livestock
Commission, shows that moving from stalls and tethers to group
housing added less than two pence to the cost of producing a kilo
of pig meat. Other factors were much, much higher.
Q41 Mr Mitchell: As an example, there
was that place in Doncaster that was closed down by the Environmental
Health Inspectors who found that they were reprocessing old chicken
and tarting it up a bit and supplying it in huge quantities to
Indian restaurants around the country.
Mr Stevenson: I do not know about
that example but can I just try and respond to some of the other
points that are being put to me. Of course I do not believe it
is easy but I do believe that if all the corporate consumers would
follow the lead of people like Marks & Spencer, who only use
free-range, McDonalds, Pizza Express, it can be done. Secondly,
already under the Rural Development Regulation, under the Common
Agricultural Policy, producers can be helped with the capital
cost of changing to better systems. Under the Commission's new
proposals, which hopefully will get decided later this week in
Luxembourg, the capacity for Member States to help their producers
move to higher welfare will be greater. There is some possibility
of using CAP monies. The reason I have talked so much about corporate
consumers is I recognise that for government—talking about
EU now—to prohibit certain imports is very difficult under
WTO terms, which is why one has to look to the big supermarkets,
the food manufacturers, who are perfectly entitled to say to any
supplier, including a non-EU one, "These are the standards
we want". As I have tried to indicate in my submission, even
if you look at the WTO it is not as negative and difficult a situation
as is often thought. The WTO, to quote Commissioner Lamy, is still
in its infancy, the rules and the thinking is shifting. I have
indicated in the written submission that there are some very interesting
cases and examples coming along which suggest that it might be
possible—difficult but not impossible—for the EU to
say "We have established certain welfare standards for our
poultry, we want imports to come from birds reared to similar
standards".
Q42 Mr Mitchell: That is true, and
flying pigs might come in as well. The EU is under great suspicion
because it is accused of using animal welfare as another protectionist
device from that gallery of protectionist devices that it has
mobilised in the past. It is not necessarily likely to be acceptable
to the Americans. You still have not tackled the basic point,
that we cannot subsidise it and we cannot control imports and
the consumer always goes for cheapness.
Mr Stevenson: Chairman, and Mr
Mitchell, I have tried within the relatively short time to answer
those points. I am aware that I am probably running out of time.
What I would say to the Committee is that, yes, it is difficult
but we pride ourselves here, and indeed in much of Europe, on
caring about animal welfare. I believe that both parts of the
poultry industry are really very poor in welfare terms. We have
got to have real changes, not just tinkering at the margin. Do
we really imagine for the next ten, 20, 30, 40 years we are going
to have these amazingly intensive poultry industries with all
of the suffering involved? We have got to have reforms but we
have also got to have a strategy that can make those reforms economically
viable. It is not easy but it is not impossible. We need industry
and government to work together.
Q43 Mr Mitchell: The industry, the
ones I have talked to in Lincolnshire south of Grimsby, is scared
stiff. They say that because the market is very competitive and
there are so many imports from Thailand and other places, the
supermarkets are constantly trying to drive the price down, that
any increase in their costs, however slight,—you say it
will only be slight and I say substantial—either from barn
rearing or enriched cages or whatever is going to drive them out
of business because the banks will not lend them money, it is
very difficult to get premises and they are strangled by the competition.
Mr Stevenson: I can only repeat,
I think it is a combination of consumers being willing to pay
more and, Chairman, you raised the difficulty of the public sector
being willing to support decent welfare standards, the supermarkets,
the chain restaurants, the food manufacturers, all exercising
their corporate social responsibility by sourcing to EU standards,
possible restrictions on imports, because I think the WTO position
is shifting. The CAP quite expressly does allow some support for
farmers moving to better welfare. A combination of all of these
factors could begin to turn the tide around. The one thing that
I think of as totally unacceptable is saying for decades to come
we will continue with both the hen and the broiler side of the
industry where, frankly, the systems being used are inhumane,
totally unacceptable.
Q44 Mr Wiggin: Can I ask you which
country do you think is the best at this?
Mr Stevenson: Generally, you mean?
Q45 Mr Wiggin: Which country is leading
the way, in your opinion, on animal welfare in poultry?
Mr Stevenson: It varies enormously.
As you know, Germany has banned enriched cages so it has gone
that step further, so from that point of view an accolade to Germany.
Q46 Chairman: Is that not a future
ban from 2012?
Mr Stevenson: What Germany has
done is they have introduced the ban on the conventional cage
five years earlier than they had to from 2007.
Q47 Mr Wiggin: Germany's poultry
industry has virtually collapsed on the strength of it.
Mr Stevenson: They banned the
ordinary cage five years early from 2007 and the enriched cage,
which they did not have to ban at all, they have banned from 2012.
An accolade to Germany for banning.
Q48 Mr Wiggin: Germany on eggs, who
on broilers?
Mr Stevenson: Although France's
intensive industry is just as bad as our own, I feel the figure
for free-range is probably quite a bit higher than the 12% I have
given but I could not find a figure that hand on heart I could
say was higher, I have seen figures of 20%. Their Label Rouge
is really free-range at its very best, the best end of free-range.
Q49 Mr Wiggin: Just to take Germany,
in percentage terms how much of the German egg industry is imported
because I understand now that Germany imports most of its eggs
from Poland?
Mr Stevenson: I honestly do not
know but you must remember that Poland and all the other Eastern
European countries will shortly be subject to the same welfare
standards as ourselves. These problems are really Europe-wide
problems and one can say that Germany is a bit better on enriched
cages, France on free-range, but overall these are very common
problems throughout the European Union and they need to be tackled
at an EU level.
Q50 Mr Wiggin: I just want to turn
to what you were saying about supermarkets selling more than 50%
non-cage eggs and you quoted a few companies earlier, like McDonalds
and Pizza Hut. You were talking about the eggs that they buy,
not the eggs used in their products, most of which will be powdered
egg from unspecified sources?
Mr Stevenson: I fully agree with
you that there is a bigger problem with the powdered egg going
into their products but, no, McDonalds' policy is that even the
eggs they use in things like sauces and cakes, not just the eggs
you see as eggs, are free-range, Marks & Spencer's policy
is that both the eggs sold as eggs and ones going into egg products
are free-range, Waitrose sell non-cage eggs but do not apply the
same rule to their products. Pizza Express, of course, only sell
products—pizza—but the eggs in that are free-range.
Some of them are being responsible enough to say, "Our policy
applies across the board".
Q51 Mr Wiggin: And some do not. On
the supermarkets that sell 50% non-cage eggs, why do you think
consumers who do not wish to see welfare standards improve should
pay for this change that you are proposing?
Mr Stevenson: I think one rightly
talks about consumer choice but where that choice has to stop,
from my point of view, is the point at which the meat or eggs
are derived from animals that have been treated cruelly. If there
is any part of the choice that should not be open to us it is
meat or eggs from animals that have been treated in cruel or inhumane
systems.
Q52 Mr Wiggin: The Israelis have
developed a chicken now with no feathers.
Mr Stevenson: Yes, I think that
is appalling.
Q53 Mr Wiggin: You would not like
to see that brought in?
Mr Stevenson: No.
Q54 Mr Wiggin: Even if it grew slower
and fulfilled all the other criteria?
Mr Stevenson: You can have a slow
growing chicken which has feathers. I can have my cake and eat
it. It can be slow growing and feathered. There is no possible
excuse to have a featherless chicken.
Q55 Mr Wiggin: There are huge costs
in terms of dealing with feathers from food production and these
fall foul of the Landfill Tax, which is something else that I
am sure you think is a good idea, so there are reasons, that because
it is animal product it has to be incinerated rather than landfilled
directly. There are all sorts of problems with legislation going
forward. The real problem for poultry standards is the WTO and
it is simply naive for all of us to hope that standards will go
up unless the WTO make it possible.
Mr Stevenson: I totally agree.
I spend probably 25% of my time lobbying on WTO issues. By the
way, I am a solicitor by background and I have written a very
detailed legal analysis of the WTO problems close to animal protection.
I agree with you. The shrimp-turtle case did introduce
quite an interesting shift, although again I am not saying that
all problems are therefore solved. Interestingly, I did have a
letter from Commissioner Lamy, the Trade Commissioner, not long
ago in which he really made the point that the WTO is still in
its infancy and he was clearly saying that these things can shift
and change, it is not set in stone forever. I know it is another
mountain to climb but if we do not set out on these mountains
of the WTO, of these big corporate consumers, what we are saying
is, "Yes, we will have rotten, low welfare farm animal systems
for decades to come".
Q56 Chairman: Before switching from
Bill to Diana to conclude the questioning, observers might assert
that the CIWF approach over-estimates the wish of consumers to
contribute to higher welfare standards, over-estimates the ability
of producers to absorb the extra cost that is associated with
higher standards, and possibly is over-optimistic about the ability
of negotiators within the WTO Round to achieve higher standards
in the way that you are suggesting. I put to Patricia Hewitt only
a few days ago the thesis, almost, that really poor countries
should have the ability to protect some of their own industries
and should be able to restrict the rate at which markets are opened
in their own interests, which is what Stephen Byers had said after
he came out of government and his P45 removed the film from his
eyes. If we cannot do it for people, how on earth are we going
to do it for other sentient beings, such as poultry? That is the
issue.
Mr Stevenson: There are a lot
of questions there. Firstly, can I make it clear that I recognise
that farmers here and in the rest of Europe cannot absorb more
costs, which is why time and again I have made it clear that we,
the consumer, both individual and corporate, have to pay the extra
costs involved. We cannot ask farmers to absorb that. You raised
the point about developing countries and with exceptions, such
as Brazil and Thailand, most developing countries do not yet have
these very industrial pig and poultry systems, in the main they
have smaller scale, more extensive farming systems, so if we have
certain standards, be they set at government level or through
the supermarkets, those countries can easily meet those standards
because they are using the very kind of systems which would readily
meet those standards. I honestly do believe if we are setting
certain standards here for developing countries they may well
find access to our markets perfectly possible. We have made the
point recently to the European Commission that they do need to
give trade related assistance to developing countries so that
they can tackle problems of certification, of identification,
where markets in the north lie, just the basic physical problems
of how you get from a farm that is maybe 200 miles from the nearest
port to Europe. Yes, there are problems but none of these are
insuperable problems.
Chairman: So retailers would source the
replacement eggs and chickens from countries like Brazil and Thailand,
which are not the very poorest of poor countries, is what you
are saying I think.
Q57 Diana Organ: From an animal welfare
point of view, does your organisation object to halal butchery
for poultry?
Mr Stevenson: Yes, except that
I must make it clear that, over the last ten years, an awful lot
of animal slaughtered for halal are now pre-stunned, so clearly
we do not object to that. We object to halal or kosher slaughter
where the animals are not stunned and we totally support the Farm
Animal Welfare Council recommendation this morning that all animals
should be stunned before slaughter. Chairman, may I just respond
very quickly before we run out of time?
Q58 Chairman: I will have to wrap
up by saying that I think our formal question session has concluded.
If there are points you wish to go back to very briefly to elaborate
on or respond to or there are other points which you feel have
not emerged in this discussion, please take this brief opportunity
to do so now.
Mr Stevenson: I want to respond
to the first half of the question and the comment you made about
what consumers want out of the situation. I think there is a real
problem. I think a food culture has been created over the last
50 years by dint of huge amounts of advertising by the food industry
in which we all expect to have large amounts of plentiful cheap
food and there is no part of that culture that encourages us to
think, how have the animals been reared and treated? I would love
to see the industry being willing to spend some of that energy
and money in creating a slightly different culture in which part
of what we look at is not just plentifulness and cheapness but
also the responsibility of saying that these animals have to be
reared to certain standards. The other point I would make is,
as citizens, time and again, people in opinion polls or letters
to members of parliament or to Government make it clear that animal
welfare is important to them. When they go into the supermarket,
they to some extent have to trust that that supermarket is behaving
responsibly. After all, if we buy a car, even one at the cheaper
end of the market, we trust, we rely upon the manufacturer that
certain safety standards are met, and I do not think for most
of us we think that some of the meat and eggs on the shelf are
actually coming from animals that have been reared in cruel systems.
We just do not know about it. I think that much greater public
information about this would help enormously. I think there are
a number of factors which would actually help consumers care more
about the welfare.
Q59 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed on behalf of the Committee for coming here today to give
your evidence. You are very welcome to sit and listen to the next
section of this inquiry where the British Retail Consortium will
be telling us why the consumer can trust what they are doing and
that they are operating in the best interest, no doubt, of the
consumers and the poultry. Thank you very much for the time being,
Mr Stevenson.
Mr Stevenson: Can I just say that
the reason I am not staying is because I have another appointment
to go to and not lack of interest. I shall look forward to reading
what they say. Thank you very much.
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