Examination of Witnesses (Questions 320-339)
LORD WHITTY
AND MR
ANDREW SLADE
19 JUNE 2003
Q320 Mr Mitchell: That is "Buy
British" rather than—
Lord Whitty: It is "Buy High
Welfare", some of which is British.
Q321 Mr Mitchell: Bio-sustainability.
Lord Whitty: Sustainability does
include an animal welfare dimension.
Q322 Chairman: Can we move on to
imports. It will not surprise you to hear that a common theme
in all evidence from the egg and meat producers, from welfare
organisations, from the trade unions has been that there are significantly
lower costs in competing countries abroad and that is eroding
the ability of the British industry to survive in the face of
the welfare standards that it has. Do you take into account when
you are framing new legislation for the poultry industry the very
low costs that do exist abroad and sometimes low standards of
health and safety and animal welfare?
Lord Whitty: The reason we regulate,
whether at national or at European level, is primarily to protect
the consumer or for animal welfare purposes; it is not for competitive
purposes or driven by what the competitive position is either
positively or negatively relative to other jurisdictions. Clearly
the way in which that legislation is framed has to take into account
the industry's anxieties about any costs or lower levels of standards
which would affect our production. As I have said earlier, whilst
the EU is able to exclude imports of food which are of lower public
safety/human safety standards and to some extent animal health
standards, they are not able to exclude them on grounds of animal
welfare under WTO.
Q323 Chairman: One of the few guarantees
you were willing to give a while ago was that imports would be
subject to inspection and I would like to hear from you what steps
are taken to ensure that imports from outside the EU do in fact
meet United Kingdom and EU standards? What sanctions do you have
available on the company or countries involved if you meet regular
and widespread breaches?
Lord Whitty: As far as the safety
standards are concerned, the EU has a responsibility for checking
the production standards within the countries we are dealing with.
Then when they come across the border in the United Kingdom, as
I was saying earlier, they are checked, historically to 50% of
all consignments and currently to 100% of all consignments from
those suspect areas which are high risk. If they are discovered
not to be meeting those standards then they are confiscated and
further consignments from those areas banned. In some cases there
may be prosecutions but, frankly, prosecutions are at a very low
level. The real cost, however, is not the level of fine but the
loss of the goods which were destined for the European market,
and they would be confiscated and destroyed.
Mr Slade: At the importer's expense.
Q324 Mr Wiggin: How many companies
have been banned now from importing to the UK?
Lord Whitty: I do not know the
answer to that; it is locations rather than companies. In poultry
specifically I do not know the answer to that.
Mr Slade: I do not know the answer
to that, I am afraid.
Q325 Mr Wiggin: Would you let us
know? If you say there is a sanction we ought to know how effective
that is and how often that is used.
Mr Slade: It may be worth saying
that at EU level, and to a degree at national level[1]
we are following up with the countries concerned that there are
problem consignments coming in. There has been quite a lot of
work with the Thai authorities, less so with Brazil although we
are increasing our liaison with the Brazilian authorities so they
can go back to the source farmers and take appropriate action.
Q326 Mr Wiggin: When you identify
what it is that makes Brazil able to compete, despite the huge
distance they have to export their chicken you will see that they
do not pay a minimum wage, they are able to feed genetically modified
soya to their chickens and they have a natural advantage in terms
of heat. GM is a government issue, the minimum wage is a government
issue so apart from the actual government-influenced elements
there is very little that makes it advantageous to grow chickens
in Brazil as opposed to Britain.
Lord Whitty: I suppose that is
broadly correct, yes.
Q327 Mr Wiggin: They are housed by
and large, so it really is government influence that stops our
production being competitive.
Mr Slade: They have a climatic
advantage (in respect of the production of soya) and there is
the availability of land.
Lord Whitty: Land is extremely
cheap compared with European land prices.
Q328 Chairman: Sticking with imports,
when the British retail consortium gave evidence to us they acknowledged
how difficult it was to apply any meaningful inspection regime
on their suppliers when their suppliers were located in, say,
Brazil or Thailand. Is there anything the government can do to
assist that process?
Lord Whitty: To assist whom in
that process?
Q329 Chairman: To help reassure the
British consumer about the standards that are in existence from
major countries that export to us.
Lord Whitty: There are EU inspections,
and the facilities which supply them in third countries are subject
to the EU inspecting them and also to the negotiations with the
authorities in those countries. The key guarantee in terms of
safety to the consumer is that the consignments are being inspected
at the border and there is a very heavy level of checking at the
border. Clearly you can get, even from premises which have been
checked, rogue consignments and therefore the fail-safe is that
you check carefully.
Mr Slade: One of the things we
have got to be careful about is that a number of European operations
now have bases in these third countries are building new factories
that meet the spec and a producing a product which meets the quality.
Mr Wiggin was talking earlier about nitrofurans. I think from
memory about 0.9, a fraction less, of all consignments that we
have checked have shown up a problem, the majority last year,
less so latterly now we have gone back to the authorities. We
have got to be careful when we talk about third country imports
being sub-standard that that is right. In many cases, it is not.
Q330 Chairman: I am now going to
tempt you down the line which was the nemesis of your equivalent
Minister in a previous administration by putting to you a point
that the British Egg Industry Council put to us, which is that
they say: "Imports of shell eggs from Spain which did not
conform to the rigorous standards demanded by the Lion Quality
Scheme were at the centre of outbreaks of salmonella in the human
population." They believe import of eggs and eggs products
should be rigorously monitored. This was within the EU so what
steps are the Government taking to ensure in a rigorous and convincing
way that imported eggs are indeed safe?
Lord Whitty: Spanish egg production
is supposed to be the same standard as the rest of the EU and
where it has been found not to be those facilities have been revisited
by the Spanish authorities and consignments have not gone into
the food chain. At the end of last year it was Spanish eggs that
were found to have the highest incidence of salmonella and the
steps were taken with the Spanish authorities accordingly. I do
not know if you have any more details we can helpfully give, I
may have something in here.
Mr Slade: It was a Phage type
14B that was found to be the problem in this outbreak last year
and it was linked to imports of Spanish eggs. The Food Standards
Agency took this up with the Spanish authorities. Around about
the same time but not directly inspired by that incident, the
Commission's Food and Veterinary Organisation was in Spain, or
had just finished carrying out in Spain, a fairly rigorous inspection,
and I believe a report has now gone forward to the Commission.
This is a rolling programme country-by-country and in Spain it
identified one or two issues that the Spanish have to address.
Within this country responsibility falls to the FSA and they are
about to (very shortly) launch a survey of imported eggs from
within the EU and elsewhere to look at issues such as salmonella.
Q331 Mr Mitchell: Why did we wait
for British people to be poisoned before we did that?
Mr Slade: I do not think that
is fair.
Q332 Mr Mitchell: But true.
Mr Slade: I think the idea of
increased surveys has been on the cards for some time. It may
well have accelerated the timetable for that but, as Lord Whitty
said, the Spanish and others should have been operating to the
same standards as the rest of us in the Community.
Q333 Mr Mitchell: If we do not check
the imports, we do not know what proportion are infected with
things like salmonella as compared to British production. Do we
know?
Mr Slade: It is only latterly
we have been checking again, on a random basis, eggs produced
in this country for salmonella.
Lord Whitty: In that period according
to the FSA (which, as you know, is not my Department's responsibility)
5% of the Spanish eggs tested proved to have salmonella whereas
none of the British Lion ones did and none of the French ones
did and none of the American ones did, and a very small proportion
of non-Lion UK producers did. In other non-EU countries it was
somewhat higher. As compared with the prevalence of salmonella
a few years ago, this was a major result for food safety standards
not only in the EU but throughout the world.
Q334 Mr Mitchell: We should create
a new authority and put Mrs Currie in charge. Bring her back.
Lord Whitty: I could not possibly
comment.
Chairman: The brand name "Curried
Eggs" springs to mind!
Q335 Mr Wiggin: Just talking about
the amount of stocking density in terms of chickens kept to produce
meat for the table, I believe the Defra welfare recommendation
is 34 kilograms per metres squared. Do you think the general public
knows that the assured chicken production standards exceed those
of the Defra Welfare Code, and what is your view on farm assurance
standards set below those recommended government welfare codes?
Lord Whitty: I am not sure of
the exact figures in that respect and I do not know if Andrew
Slade can clarify that, but it is the case that the assurance
standards in chicken, eggs and other areas are an industry responsibility,
they are not a government responsibility. They do raise standards
and give some assurance to consumers but they may not be optimum
standards, they are the standards which the industry is prepared
to work to. With a general approach to standards, following the
Curry Commission and so forth, we wanted to bring clarity of the
standards and higher awareness of the standards that have so far
been achieved in many fields. It is certainly true in the egg
field that the British public have recognised the Red Lion so
much they had to bring it back when they dropped it, but in many
of the other areas, including poultry meat, the public awareness
of the standards and what the standards mean is much more limited,
and that is one of the main conclusions from the Curry Commission.
This is not Mrs Currie, nor indeed your Chairman but Sir Don Curry.
We need to do a lot more work both on the standards and to generalise
them and make sure that they are more understandable and accepted
by the public as a whole. I think in terms of your question it
is probably true that the public are not aware of that discrepancy
but they are not aware of many other things relating to standards,
including what they are intended to achieve. It is part of government
policy to support the industry but allow the industry itself to
deliver higher standards and more readily communicable standards.
Q336 Mr Wiggin: Do you think the
government should play a statutory role in ensuring that farm
assurance standards are adhered to?
Lord Whitty: Not in any direct
sense, no. This was considered by the Curry Commission as to whether
the government should in any sense be responsible for farm standards
and, except in a few limited areas, that is not the case generally
and there is no particularly good reason for it being so. In most
industries the industry itself sets standards subject to government
regulation on safety and so on. I think in a medium-term strategy
there ought to be some synergy between what the trade standard
is, what we expect out of the move to whole farm regulation and
what farmers work to, and to that extent the regulatory side would
support the standards side and vice versa, but we are not at that
point yet and it would not be, even in those circumstances, a
direct enforcement by the government of the standards.
Q337 Chairman: One of the standards,
the Assured Chicken Poultry Production Standard—requires
companies to demonstrate that feedstuffs do not contain antibiotic
growth promoters. Earlier this month there were widespread press
reports that these have been slipped in or reintroduced. Do you
think that farm assurance schemes of this kind can in general
be credible if that sort of thing is happening?
Lord Whitty: I saw the press reports,
I am not aware they were talking about chicken which was allegedly
to those standards. This is again FSA territory rather than Defra
territory.
Mr Slade: Two antibiotic growth
promoters are licensed for use in chickens—avilamycin is
one and I am afraid I cannot remember what the other one is called.
They are due to be phased out on an EU-wide basis in 2006; therefore
there is nothing illegal about an assurance scheme having those
within its framework. I recall from the press report that there
was concern about whether they were being used for their correct
purpose as opposed to some sort of health benefit, but there is
some evidence from Denmark and other places that there is a sub-clinical
health benefit from AGPs (antibiotic growth promoters). I believe
that it was because of the increase in instances of hock burn,
which results from wet litter, that the ACP (Assured Chicken Production
Scheme) chairman decided to allow the use of AGPs within the scheme.
Q338 Chairman: The British Egg Industry
Council put to us a concern that in recent decades there has been
little recognition of cost of production during their negotiations
with multiple retailers. Defra has made the right noises about
ensuring that the prime producer gets a fairer share of the final
retail cost at the check-out, as it were, but do you believe,
Lord Whitty, that the cost of higher welfare standards that are
imposed by legislation are borne unduly by farmers and producers
rather than the whole supply chain?
Lord Whitty: I think if you take
the food chain as a whole then the answer is almost certainly
yes. In the particular case of production of eggs then of course
the supply chain is much simpler than it is, for example, in red
meat. Even in poultry it is relatively simple compared with red
meat and the number of stages in the chain probably make the disadvantages
to the farmer greater, so I would not necessarily say the sector
we are discussing today was the worst sufferer from that. Nevertheless,
as with everything else, for farmers or even large manufacturers
the power of the supermarkets in particular as negotiating partners
is very substantial and there are consequences of that in terms
of the price that they can get and the contract conditions that
they can get.
Q339 Chairman: How satisfied are
you, moving on to another related area, with the operation of
the voluntary Code of Practice on supermarket dealings with suppliers.
The BPC were reluctant to give particular examples because of
retaliatory action by supermarkets and they feared loss of business,
but they say demands have intensified, in other words implying
that this voluntary Code is not working.
Lord Whitty: As you know, the
OFT are currently reviewing the Code. I am not sure that I am
stating a government position here but my impression is that it
is not working and it is not working partly because people are
afraid to put their head above the parapet. This applies not only
to farmers supplying directly or indirectly to supermarkets but
also to some major companies who deal with supermarkets. The Code
does require the complainant to be identified and indeed in some
cases it would be difficult to examine the complaint where the
complainant had not been identified because the complainant is
worried about future delisting or other sanctions that might be
imposed on them even if the finding of the OFT were to be in their
favour. The OFT are looking at those issues now. I myself am having
some discussions with the OFT as well as with various other parts
of the food chain and the supermarkets themselves. I do not think
the objective which came out of the Competition Authority's recommendation
for the Code has yet been achieved.
1 Note by witness: There is currently a ban
on all animal products from China.
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