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The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but the time limit is 15 minutes. He has now spoken for 17 minutes.
Lord Plumb: My Lords, I thank the noble Countess and I shall come to a conclusion. However, I wanted to deal with those particular figures, which are of considerable importance. The 108,000 tonnes of meat which came into this country during the foot and mouth disease outbreak is of considerable concern to all of us.
We shall have to rely on the benefit of the links between the various organisations, and more research and development will have to be done. Above all, we
do not want to be a dumping ground for meat products produced below the high standards expected in British production. I beg to move for Papers.3.24 p.m.
Lord Haskins: My Lords, I feel obliged to declare my many and somewhat contradictory interests in this subject. Until recently, I was chairman of one of Britain's largest food manufacturers, Northern Foods—a smaller bête noire of the agricultural industry. I have also been in some partnership relationships with supermarkets for some years—a much larger bête noire of the British agricultural industry. On the other hand, I am the father of two farming sons. I also have an Irish connection, which gives some suspicion to certain people. I have recently retired as the "better regulator", which gives a lot of suspicion to a lot of people. I am also for the most part a supporter of the current Government as well as having given them some advice on recovery from foot and mouth.
All of that suggests that in today's world, because the suspicious might argue that I am merely arguing my vested interests, I should be debarred from engaging in this debate. I shall try, however, to avoid the trap. Moreover, my interests are so contradictory that I have every expectation that I shall upset everyone—which has been my achievement in recent months.
The noble Lord, Lord Plumb, has vividly and convincingly stated the situation of the British livestock industry, which is a very serious matter. I have my own concerns, the first of which is uncertainty. Uncertainty applies right across British agriculture. The industries with which I have been involved, when faced with uncertainty, became frightened and refused to invest. In this case, however, it all comes down to British agriculture's uncertain relationship with the euro and the uncertainty surrounding the pound. That seems a fundamental issue. The other great uncertainty is the continuing debate about where the common agricultural policy will lead. We must sympathise with farmers about that uncertainty in trying to plan their future.
Putting the matter in perspective, however, the Government have offered substantial compensation for BSE in the past five years. There are those who argue that some of the compensation for foot and mouth disease may prove to have been overgenerous rather than undergenerous. Substantial funds are still being provided because of the common agricultural policy. Remarkably—because they are either idiotic or very prudent—the vast majority of culled-out farmers have returned to the business from which they were removed. They have restocked. It is an interesting picture. Breeding stock prices are increasing remarkably. Three weeks ago, the Perth bull sales achieved unprecedented prices—another sign of confidence in the future.
Export demand in pig breeding—a business which I know very well—has been very strong. As soon as the restraints were lifted, foreign buyers wanted to buy our
high-quality breeding pigs. That is very encouraging. As I have gone round the country, despite all the difficulties and the concerns about milk prices which the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, rightly mentioned, I have found many farmers investing substantially to increase yields and throughputs and to reduce costs. Those are all good, very businesslike developments.It is all a bit puzzling. My advice to farmers is not to overstate the crisis. The Treasury loves an overstated case that it can demolish. To overstate one's case when dealing with the Treasury is very bad tactics.
The three groups to which we look to deal with the crisis must be, first, the European Union, secondly, the British Government, and, thirdly, farmers themselves. I shall deal with each very briefly. At the top of the European Union's agenda in the next six months approaching enlargement must be radical reform of the CAP—costly, bureaucratic, corruptible and imposing unnecessary restraints on progressive farmers. The second priority, which I think will be dealt with following the French elections, is a lifting of the French ban on British imports. I suspect that that will happen in the next few weeks. Thirdly, we need a more co-ordinated European approach to controlling animal disease. That approach must deal with imports, research, and the vexed question of vaccination against foot and mouth disease.
We come next to the role of the British Government. First, the Government must not directly intervene in the exchange rate; no British Government seeking to do so have succeeded. However, the moment that the exchange rate is compatible—when sterling is 10 to 15 per cent below its current level against the euro—the Government should seriously consider entering euroland. If there is one group in this country who will benefit, it is British farmers. There may be questions and disadvantages elsewhere, but British farmers must see that it is in their interests.
The noble Lord, Lord Plumb, mentioned my role in regulation. We submitted a very compelling report to the Government about the need to simplify and codify and to make inspection simpler. The Government have had to deal with foot and mouth disease. However, I beg them to return urgently to that report and to implement its many sound findings. The Government must continue to press very strongly for reform of the CAP. I know they are doing so.
More cash is not the solution to the problem. If that was the case, we would not have a problem. The British Government must encourage British farmers to help themselves. How? First, farmers can themselves tackle huge inefficiencies. The spread between the best and the worst British farmers in any sector would be unacceptable in any other industry. It is amazing that the worst farmers survive. That issue has to be faced.
Secondly, British farmers must learn to co-operate in the way they buy, in the way they share their assets and, above all, in the way they market. We are far behind all our major competitors in the area of co-operation. Thirdly, any industry which is not investing is going backwards. Despite the uncertainty, I plead
with British farmers to invest, to raise standards, to improve quality, to get better yields, to rationalise, to increase throughputs and to improve animal welfare.Fourthly, British farmers must replace the 40 year-old culture of dependency with one of enterprise and recognise that the world has switched from a producer-led market to a consumer-led market. The days when the president of the NFU could go in all his pomp to Whitehall to ask for, and expect to get, large handouts from a grateful government are, I am afraid, over. We have to live with the reality that farmers, like everyone else, have to learn to stand on their own feet. I am confident that British farmers can do just that.
3.31 p.m.
Lord Geraint: My Lords, in my view livestock farmers will never survive unless they have a realistic price for their end product. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, agrees with my views. I also thank him for initiating this debate and for his excellent, informative opening speech. I hope that the Minister will now take the necessary action to help our ailing industry.
I have been involved with the agriculture industry all my life. I have exported and imported meat from Europe and I am proud to be the patron of the Welsh livestock auctioneers who have looked after the interests of farmers in Wales for generations. I will challenge anyone who believes that there is a better system of marketing livestock than the present auction system. The producer has the final say whether the auctioneer can sell his stock. He will know exactly how much he will get for his sheep and cattle. Many firms of auctioneers pay on the day of the sale. What else can you ask for?
The Government are still failing to prevent a new outbreak of foot and mouth disease by refusing to allocate extra financial resources towards stamping out illegal meat imports. Welsh farmers have been at the forefront of efforts to stop illegal meat imports and to close a loophole allowing people to bring in a kilo of meat from abroad for their own consumption. However, the growing illegal trade, believed by many experts to be supported by large criminal gangs, poses an increased risk to health in this country.
The media have highlighted the potential dangers from bushmeat entering this country for over a year, yet virtually nothing has been done to prevent this meat reaching the United Kingdom. Last year's outbreak of foot and mouth disease was imported into this country from abroad. Who is to say that other diseases, such as the deadly human Ebola virus, will not be next? I believe that the Government must commit greater law enforcement resources to crack down on this illegal trade.
According to Bob Parry, the President of the Farmers Union of Wales,
- "Gangs and individuals who smuggle illegal, potentially diseased, meat must be dealt with in the same way as heroin or cocaine traffickers".
Mr Clive Lawrance of Ciel Logistics at Heathrow is the company manager transporting for inspection products of meat origin into Heathrow. Mr Lawrance is concerned about the ineffectiveness of the powers to search just granted to Customs and Excise officers. He says that they omit the power to stop and search, so that officers are not empowered to stop a moving vehicle, and that shows a lack of urgency by the Government to deal with the problem. Mr Lawrance believes that the revenue to run an effective enforcement authority at all ports of entry should be raised through a tax on all passengers of, say, £1 per passenger. Some 65 million passengers a year pass through Heathrow alone so you get some idea of what sums could be raised through a tax of this sort.
Not only would such revenue be used to fund a proper enforcement authority, but the amounts raised at the larger ports such as Heathrow and Dover could subsidise developments at smaller ports. Mr Lawrance firmly believes that the poster campaign introduced at ports last January stipulating that illegal meat importers can be fined up to £5,000 or gaoled for up to two years is unenforceable due to lack of staff. The reluctance of the Home Office to deport culprits back to their home countries is another problem.
As the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, said, 2,000 refrigerated containers arrive in Dover daily and 6 million containers arrive in Britain every year. I urge the Minister to persuade DEFRA to get its act together over what has become a major topical issue.
We have strict livestock movement controls in this country following the foot and mouth outbreak, but nothing has been done to control the importation of illegal meats. What we need now is action, not words. The Minister responsible for agriculture, Margaret Beckett, has promised to help the agriculture industry, yet DEFRA seems to me to be slow to act on her proposals. Farmers are desperate to move forward and produce good, home-produced food at a reasonable price for the consumer. Concerted effort must be made to stop foot and mouth entering this country from abroad in the future. I ask the Minister, is there any glimmer of hope in his view that things will get better and improve during the year to help those who are desperately calling out for help and guidance?
3.37 p.m.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, for instigating this debate. I declare an interest as I have three breeds of sheep and a pony stud.
I can say from first-hand experience that there are many worries at this present time with livestock farming. Time, energy and dedication have to go into producing livestock. I hope that this debate will also help to educate some people who do not appreciate what goes into producing a litre of milk: the early rising; keeping the cows and equipment clean; the feeding and grass management; the fencing; keeping all the records; covering for farmer or staff illness and vets' bills. It is endless.
So many people are still living in the shadow of foot and mouth disease. In the past two weeks there have been two scares in North Yorkshire. The fear of many different diseases hitting the livestock industry seems to be ever with us. I quote from this week's Farmers' Weekly,
- "After F&M comes bovine TB crisis. Bovine TB is the forgotten disease of UK stock farming. While the nation focused on F&M a TB time bomb began ticking".
The National Beef Association's Beef 2002 event has switched venues to Wooler in Northumberland after the discovery of possible TB reactors on the original farm site. Bovine TB could end beef and dairy farming on the South Downs if the fears of a West Sussex producer are realised. He believes that a rapid rise in badger numbers is responsible for the first TB outbreak in the county for six years. Wales and the West Country also have a problem. There is a serious debate about how bovine TB is passed from cattle to cattle—or does it come from badgers?
Robert Forster, the chief executive of the National Beef Association said,
- "if badger protesters truly have the interests of their species at heart and genuinely wish to guard its welfare, they must protect it against TB".
The recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the UK has highlighted the dangers of illegally imported meat, as has been said. It is thought that that is how the disease entered the country. Other diseases, such as Ebola, anthrax, swine fever, salmonella, E. coli, sheep pox, pseudorabies, African horse sickness and Nipah virus—that causes agonisingly painful death in pigs and humans—could be introduced into the UK via meat. Those diseases are present in countries that illegally export bushmeat to Europe and the US. That threat is very real. Last year, the UK suffered from swine fever and foot and mouth. In 2000, there was an Ebola scare at Heathrow airport when the carcasses of 15 monkeys were found hidden in a cargo of fruit and vegetables, along with an anteater and some tortoise legs. Fortunately, that was just a scare. Another time, we might not be so lucky.
More than 1,000 tonnes of meat is illegally imported into the UK each year. There are about 200 airport seizures a month but it is thought that airports detect at most one-tenth of illegal meat. About 90 per cent of passengers on flights from West Africa are illegally importing meat into Britain. The trade in bushmeat does not just jeopardise wildlife populations; it also poses a very real threat to human and animal health in Africa, Europe and the US. Should we not have far more sniffer dogs at our airports? I am told that the concentration span of a sniffer dog is about 20 minutes. There would need to be teams of dogs that work on rotas.
Knowing that this debate was to take place, I was asked by someone who recently flew to Australia and New Zealand and complied with their strict
regulations—they prevent the entry of any form of disease into their countries, whether plant life or animals would be affected—why no such regulations were in place in Britain. We continue to fear for the protection of the livestock industry from many diseases, let alone ourselves.Does the Minister agree that our rare breeds are part of our heritage and need preserving? I am a member of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. It exists to conserve rare and threatened breeds of our indigenous farm livestock and has, over nearly 30 years, worked in many different ways to achieve that. The trust does much to protect the nation's stock of rare breeds of farm livestock from disease. The RBST does much work educating the public and supports its members. The farming industry feels that it is not wanted or understood by the Government. I hope that the Government realise that without farming and livestock the countryside will become a desolated wilderness.
3.44 p.m.
Lord Soulsby of Swaffham Prior: My Lords, the House should be grateful to my noble friend Lord Plumb for initiating this important debate. He said that livestock agriculture in the United Kingdom will never be the same. That is absolutely true. That is the result of devastating diseases such as BSE, swine fever, foot and mouth disease and so on. Agriculture in the UK—livestock agriculture in particular—has always been resilient. Britain's livestock agriculture is characterised by the fact that it can respond to various needs, as we saw during the Second World War.
According to the National Farmers Union, only about 6 per cent of holdings that were affected by foot and mouth disease have no plans to restock. The rest will do so and will not leave the industry. Those who remain will carry out the valuable task of rebuilding and maintaining the livestock industry. They will work within important strictures, which include environmental demands, food quality, exports, feed additives and so on. It is contingent on Her Majesty's Government to assure the livestock industry that the devastating diseases that we have suffered during the past couple of years do not occur again and that domestic diseases, from which there have been great losses, will be enormously reduced.
There has been much concern about animal welfare. Animal disease is often linked to poor health among animals and is a major cause of poor welfare. Indeed, in my own profession—the veterinary profession—large animal work increasingly focuses on animal health and productivity rather than merely on the "fire brigade" work of attending to the individual animal that is ill. In order to do that, the profession needs appropriate tools for surveillance, early diagnosis, appropriate treatment and preventive action, such as vaccines.
Surveillance, especially of exotic diseases—several noble Lords have already mentioned that—is not as good as it should be. Not only do we not place curbs on the introduction into this country of food products from all over the world, although other countries, such
as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, do so, but major quantities of foodstuffs are imported into this country and we have no idea where much of it comes from. Bushmeat, for example, has been mentioned.Surveillance also applies to our domestic diseases. There is a particular need to get vets back on farms. Many livestock farms never see their veterinarian from one year to the next. The surveillance of disease is therefore very poor. A programme by which local veterinarians served as veterinary health welfare officers would be valuable. One way to do that would be to revisit the old Veterinary Investigation Service, which was once a major jewel in the crown of disease control in this country but which has been whittled away. Although it is now effective as the Veterinary Laboratory Agency, its manpower situation is not good.
Another approach is to designate certain livestock veterinary practices as sentinel practices, which are charged with overseeing animal health and management in their area so that they can report periodically on the general health status of livestock in their area. A somewhat similar recommendation was made in the Phillips report, which recognised the great need for increased surveillance of BSE.
Critical to disease control is early diagnosis. We know from the outbreak of foot and mouth disease that if we had had an adequate early diagnostic test we should have been in much better shape than we were. Again, this issue requires research but, unfortunately, the research capacity of the veterinary profession is not as good as it should be. Although he is not in his place this afternoon, my noble friend Lord Selborne chaired a very important committee which looked into this matter for the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons.
Disease prevention is, of course, an issue which is particularly addressed by vaccination, as mentioned earlier by noble Lords. Again, we need effective vaccines that are easily administered, can be produced in large amounts, remain active for a long time and can differentiate between vaccination and infection. With the modern biotechnologies of genomic characterisation, we should be able to do that.
In all of this, I would say that the price of freedom from disease is eternal vigilance. We must take that on board. If noble Lords will permit me, perhaps I may finish by making one positive comment on what I consider to be such vigilance. A meeting was organised on Monday and Tuesday this week by DEFRA to look at antibiotic resistance in animals and animal feeds. It was a most impressive congress. I congratulate DEFRA on setting it up and initiating important research in this area. To my mind, that is an example of appropriate vigilance. I hope that it can be extended to other livestock areas where the needs are just as obvious as those relating to the misuse and imprudent use of antibiotics.
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