Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
MR ANDREW
JORET AND
MR MARK
WILLIAMS
17 JUNE 2003
Q120 Chairman: No, but by consumer
demand?
Mr Joret: Yes, but we still see
that what we call the caged egg, the value egg, is still going
to be a significant feature of the major retailers as also it
will be for eggs for processing, so we have taken that into account.
At the same time, what we have looked at is what the further relaxing
or liberalisation in the next WTO round will do to tariffs and,
under various scenarios, we can then paint a distinct picture
that we will be very uncompetitive, particularly as far as eggs
for egg processing is concerned and that is really our major concern.
On the one hand, we have our costs rising because of welfare considerations
here in the UK and in the EU and, at the same time, greater liberalisation.
Q121 Mr Wiggin: You talked about
50/50 at about 2012. I want to ask whether or not your view is
that consumers will demand to buy free range or barn or whatever
types of eggs, but that does not take into consideration the huge
amount of egg powder, eggs used for, say, quiches and all the
secondary type of egg usage, if you like. So, when you said 50/50,
how did that really break down? Is that just eggs that we see
in shops or is that usage as a whole?
Mr Joret: That was a view on the
egg market as a whole. I did say that our current egg market is
roughly 70/30, that is the national production statistics, but
if you look at where the non-caged eggs are sold, it is clearly
at retail where retail is already about 60/40 but, in the processing
sector, over 90% of the egg used in processing is caged as we
speak and we have taken a view on how those markets will develop
over the next nine years.
Q122 Mr Wiggin: Can I take the figures
forward from 60/40 and 90% and you think works out at roughly
50/50. I think there is quite a lot of speculation there.
Mr Joret: It is of course a crystal
ball gazing job but we think that, in the retail sector, it will
probably be something like 40% caged, that is the value end of
sales in 2012, which is less than half, but, in the process sector,
it will still be well over half, probably two-thirds.
Q123 Mr Wiggin: And that does not
take into consideration all the producers of food rather than
eggs who will simply move their production abroad and simply return
finished products such as a ready-made quiche in the UK?
Mr Joret: The biggest risk to
us actually, as you rightly point out, is egg powders which can
be traded very readily on a world-wide basis where transport cost
is low, there is no requirement for refrigeration and there are
no real food safety issues certainly in terms of bacteria anyway
with the dried powder.
Chairman: So you are saying that enriched
cages will not enrich the industry!
Q124 Mr Mitchell: You do not even
know whether you will be allowed to use enriched cages after 2012.
Mr Joret: The legislation currently
of course allows it and we have just had—
Q125 Mr Mitchell: Yes, but after
2012.
Mr Joret: Our current legislation
does allow it after 2012.
Q126 Mr Mitchell: We have Elliott
Morley saying that he does not know yet.
Mr Joret: The directive is required
to be reviewed by the EU in 2005 and the outcome of that review
will of course be important to us. Bear in mind that, when the
directive is reviewed, it will be reviewed by an EU of 25 Member
States, not 15, so we are going to have a number of different
opinions in there when that directive is reviewed and I think
that Elliott Morley in his statement, which we welcome very much,
said that whatever we did would be done on an EU-wide basis and
that is really the important point for us, not for the UK or even
England alone due to devolution to go ahead of EU-based legislation.
Q127 Mr Mitchell: You gave us some
costs earlier on but what is the extra cost of putting all the
caged birds in enriched cages?
Mr Joret: Just over £400
million. Of the total cost of meeting the directive, I think that
just over £400 million was due to rehousing the caged element
of the production and the balance was due to changes affecting
both free range and barn production.
Q128 Mr Mitchell: And the cost there
is presumably that you get fewer cages in the same space.
Mr Joret: You do indeed, yes.
Roughly speaking, you will get about two-thirds of the number
of birds. Therefore, you need poultry housing for another one
third of the birds.
Q129 Mr Mitchell: In your evidence,
you are defending enriched cages. "Enriched cages" is
a terrible phrase. It is rather like this building as opposed
to that building. You say that they allow the birds to display
a wide range of normal behaviours. If they permit a wide range
of normal behaviours, which ones do they not permit?
Mr Joret: You cannot question
that an enriched cage offers a significant advantage over a conventional
cage. The directive that set in train enriched cages is only four
years old, it came out in 1999, and, when the directive was actually
produced, the dimensions for the enriched cage came from research
work that was being done in Sweden actually on a very small number
of birds. What we have seen in practice since the directive was
published is remarkable development and ideas as to what constitutes
an enriched cage. Our own company has been a partner in Defra-sponsored
research into enriched cages, we have our own trial house, and
we feel that we have learned a lot as practical producers about
enriched cages and I think that we have moved on. What is now
looking very attractive to us rather than when the directive was
first published is in fact what we are calling much larger colony
cages. They still have the same space per bird but, because it
is a much larger colony—and I am talking here about colonies
of 40 or 60 birds—you can then allocate space within that
very large cage far more effectively, so you have a very good
nesting area and a very good scratching area, and you can then
actually observe and see the birds nesting. Over 90% of the eggs
would be laid in the nests and that is clearly telling you that
it is quite a high driver for the birds to do that and they respond.
It is not as if birds can read; we do not label it "nest";
the birds use what you provide. You can see dust bathing and scratching
going on. Likewise, the use of perches is tremendous. At nighttime,
all the birds will be asleep on the perches which is what they
would presumably do in a natural environment.
Q130 Mr Mitchell: The Farm Animal
Welfare Council has defined five freedoms. Are all those five
freedoms attained in enriched cages?
Mr Joret: We believe that they
are and that is quite an interesting analysis because one thing
that we are looking for as an industry actually is an assessment
of all the different production systems against those five freedoms.
It has not been done. The Farm Animal Welfare Council last reported
on commercial eggs in 1997 and I think it would probably be very
opportune for another look-see at the systems of production that
are now available. We certainly believe that the enriched cage,
as it is dreadfully called, does in fact meet the five freedoms.
Q131 Mr Mitchell: In that case, why
are the Farm Animal Welfare Council calling for further research
on enriched cages?
Mr Joret: I think because this
is very much a fledgling issue. An enriched cage has only been
with us for four years and the improvements in design are already
evident and I think that now would probably be a good time for
them to have a look at it.
Q132 Mr Mitchell: To what extent
would you accept that the free-range systems, for instance, have
higher levels of animal welfare than the caged systems?
Mr Joret: I think it is a balance.
There is not actually a perfect system of egg production. Both
our own Farm Animal Welfare Council when they reported in 1997
and the EU Scientific Veterinary Committee when it reported in
1996 actually listed all the different systems and listed pros
and cons of each of the systems. There is not a perfect system.
I think that if there were, the industry would have readily adopted
it. What we have to look at now is whether the new systems that
we are moving to with enriched cages are a significant improvement.
Q133 Mr Mitchell: What is the advantage
of each, free range as opposed to enriched cages?
Mr Joret: I think that, in free
range, clearly you have the ability for the bird to go outside,
although that in itself is not something a bird necessarily sees
as a strong issue. The ancestor of the birds we use is the wild
jungle fowl and its natural habitat would be scratching around
under the forest canopy and not in a wide open grass field. They
actually do not like wide open spaces. For those running free-range
systems nowadays it is all about enriching the range by trees
and other forms of cover to actually encourage the birds to go
outside. The downside of the alternative system, the loose-housed
systems, is that you are dealing with very large colonies, colonies
of 2,000 or 3,000 birds let us say, and so far we have not yet
been able to do away with the need to beak trim those birds because
of the risks of feather pecking and cannibalism. We still see,
as practical producers, significantly higher mortality levels
on our non-caged systems compared to our caged systems.
Q134 Mr Mitchell: Do you?
Mr Joret: Yes.
Mr Mitchell: Last week, Compassion in
World Farming was pretty critical of enriched cages, largely on
the grounds that they did not give the birds enough room.
Chairman: They did said it did not go
far enough.
Q135 Mr Mitchell: In that case, why
not enrich them a little more and make them a little bigger? I
just thought, from my own look at poultry farms in the area near
Grimsby, it is a fairly miserable spectacle with all these poor
bloody birds sitting there. They cannot really move much and their
limbs do get broken. So, why not just make the cage bigger? Why
should there be a limit to enrichment?
Mr Joret: There is a significant
increase in space envisaged from 550 square centimetres to 750.
Do not forget that in the house within a barn or within a free-range
system, we currently stock at 11.7 birds a square metre and that
falls to nine. That 11.7 equates to 850 square centimetres. So,
actually, the space allowance between a barn bird in its house
and an enriched cage bird is not—
Q136 Mr Mitchell: It is still not
much.
Mr Joret: What I am saying is
that the space allowance is not that different between the two
systems when it comes down to it.
Q137 Mr Mitchell: Are the limits
on enlargement simply economic?
Mr Joret: Yes, clearly.
Q138 Mr Mitchell: Are there practical
limits in which it does not improve the lot of the bird if it
gets bigger?
Mr Joret: I think that those key
questions are what the research is actually looking at because
there is a great deal of uncertainty in this. Is there actually
a welfare benefit between 550 and 750 square centimetres? There
is actually no evidence to say that there is.
Mr Williams: There is one other
issue which perhaps ought to be mentioned here and that is that,
as Andrew said, the larger the colony you get, the less control
you have over the birds within it. The danger is of course that
birds can then start feather pulling which can lead to cannibalism
and obviously mortality and, as someone rightly told me one day,
mortality is the ultimate welfare insult to a hen. There is a
balance to be struck. One of the important points to note about
animal welfare and the directive we have is that these costs we
face are not just on cages, we are not just looking after the
move from conventional to enriched cages, the costs will go up
also in the non-caged systems as more space is given to these
birds. You referred to the Farm Animal Welfare Council and they
are the first people to readily admit that there is an inextricable
link between animal welfare and economics and obviously there
is a balance there that has to be met in the confines of the industry
we operate in today.
Q139 Mr Wiggin: There is one thing
that most people, particularly people concerned about animal welfare,
have not really taken on board and that is that you were talking
about enriched cages of 40 birds and that is very different from
the single or maybe four birds per cage concept of battery farming
that most animal welfare organisations have in mind. What are
you doing to educate these people because we are talking about
a significantly different environment for that chicken to live
in?
Mr Joret: As an industry, we are
actually inviting as many people who are prepared to come and
see and have a look at the sort of systems we are talking about.
We have had quite a number of MPs come to visit our facilities
to actually look at this and we have also had, for example, the
poultry issues group of the Farm Animal Welfare Council who came
to see this unit last year.
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