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Mr. Evans: It remains to be seen what competitive advantage British pig farmers will gain, as 30 per cent. of all bacon goes to catering concerns, which will continue to go on price: if it is cheaper, they will buy bacon from Denmark, where there are stalls and tethers. A lot of bacon goes under brand names, in any case. The Danish pig industry has done a tremendous marketing job for many years. In my local supermarket last week I could not buy any bacon other than Danish, and I am in a rural area. If the supermarkets have shown the way, I do not put much faith in the support that we will get in the future.
I believe that the Minister is considering banning certain antibiotics, including growth enhancers. If that is done simultaneously throughout the European Union,
there will be no competitive advantage to other countries, but if we do it even before the science says that growth enhancers are wrong, we will heap more costs on British pig farmers. I understand that, for every £1 that will no longer be spent on antibiotics, £6 will have to be spent on feeding the animals. How does the Minister intend to ensure that any ban is science-based and applied equally throughout the European Union?
Pig feed made from meat and bone meal is banned here, but not in the rest of the European Union. What hope can the Minister give the British pig farmers for progress on that?
Consumers should be given as much information as possible. They do not know that farmers are getting less for their product, because prices in the shops are virtually the same as they were two years ago. How can we ensure that consumers have the information to make intelligent decisions about what they buy?
Pig farmers used to get something for the waste from the pig, but now they get nothing: in fact, they have to pay to get all the waste destroyed.
My greatest fear is that, with all the extra costs and higher standards, British pigmeat will be more expensive and supermarkets will simply go for what is cheaper. Housewives will certainly go for the cheaper option, because many of them are on fixed incomes and cannot afford to make ethical or moral choices. What consultations is the Minister holding on support for the British pig industry?
I read in The Daily Telegraph this morning that 1.3 million extra eggs are being sold every day because Delia Smith demonstrated some recipes using eggs. Do British pig farmers have to rely on Delia Smith to concoct a wonderful recipe including British pigmeat to give the industry a boost, or can they rely on the Minister for some support?
Mr. Alan Hurst (Braintree):
There is all-party support for the British pig industry, and I was a little saddened that the hon. Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) sought party advantage in what is obviously a dire crisis for the whole of agriculture, and especially the pig industry. The idea of intervention, at which he was hinting, is not historically justified. According to my researches, pig farming has not historically received state support, and I do not believe that pig farmers want subsidy, although I understand that they face particular problems.
Veterinary inspection is required not only for pigs: I recently visited a turkey farm--run by a family firm since the 1920s--where people made the same points to me as the pig farmers made to the hon. Member for Ribble Valley. They are most anxious that the charges for continuous veterinary inspection should be on a headage or a weight basis, because the small operator is bound to suffer if there is a time-cost charge. In this time of agricultural crisis, I see some merit in the Government's
at least considering some assistance with the cost of veterinary inspection for those involved in animal husbandry.
Mr. Hayes:
One understands that universal subsidies cannot be applied across the board, especially in the arable, pigmeat and poultry sectors, but specific, targeted and focused help for exactly the sort of producers thatthe hon. Gentleman highlighted--in Essex and Lincolnshire--might have been expected from the statement earlier this week. I hope that the Minister will bring a more helpful proposal to the House.
Mr. Hurst:
My judgment was that my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was warmly received and that it was generally accepted that he had consulted widely and listened, and had taken almost all the financial steps that the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) had urged him to take about two weeks earlier.
Mixed farms used to be much more common than they are today and, perhaps not in Norfolk but in many other areas, people used to move into and out of pig farming according to the state of the market, but that is no longer possible, because pig production has become much more capital-intensive. As far as I can gather, all farmers welcome the improvement in welfare standards, but that has added to capital costs, so people can no longer do pigs one year and chickens the next.
I am a little anxious if the only solution to the pig farming problem is thought to be discussions with our European neighbours about bringing all welfare standards up to the same level, because, if we wait for those negotiations to reach a proper conclusion, there will be few pig farmers left in this country to produce a product that has been so successfully improved over recent years.
Encouraging figures were given in a recent Adjournment debate, showing the progress that the pig farming industry had made over the past few years. A much leaner product has been produced to satisfy popular consumption demand. Until recently, the figures showed that the amount of pigmeat exported from this country had almost doubled.
However, what the industry cannot do--we probably cannot do it either, and it has been skirted around this morning as if it does not matter--is to solve the financial crisis in Russia and the far eastern economies. It is not just our pigmeat producers who cannot export to those countries; our European competitors face the same problem. In a declining world market, everybody will jostle and tussle, almost like pigs in a pen, for what is left in the market. I am not surprised that the Danish and Dutch producers are seeking to enter our markets, just as we would seek to enter theirs.
At present, our people are disadvantaged because of the strength of the pound. I appreciate that there is no easy answer to that. In all my reading of the proceedings in this Chamber going back over many decades, I have not yet found any Government saying that it is their policy to weaken the currency. That is not the answer. We have to accept that there is a problem because our competitors' products are cheaper than ours and because they have not advanced as far as we have in welfare considerations. Many of our producers have implemented those welfare considerations voluntarily.
We need to be a little careful about horror stories about the wickedness of our competitors. We were warned about that during the beef crisis, when German producers sought to do that about our beef. In fact, they frightened their own consumers so much that they ate less beef of any kind, from whatever country.
It is right to aim some criticism at the supermarket monopolies. They have enormous power in the agricultural community. It is right that my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food have entered into discussions with the supermarket chains, or the organisation that represents them, to secure certain assurances for pigmeat producers in particular and for the producers of more general meat products.
The assurance which already exists is that the product will be labelled according to the country of rearing and birth rather than the country of packaging. It has always seemed absurd to state where something is packaged. There is no earthly point in my being told that Somerset cider is bottled in London. I want to know that it comes from Somerset. The same would apply to any other regional product. I want to know that I am buying British bacon if that is what I choose. I believe that my right hon. and hon. Friends have made considerable advances, bearing in mind the power of the supermarket chains in retail sales.
I believe that things have gone further. As was announced earlier this week by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, supermarket chains are saying that, from 1 January, they will offer for sale only pork or bacon products which are produced to the same level of welfare standards as ours. I have a degree of faith in British consumers and I believe that, once that proposition becomes more widely known, they will seek to purchase our products rather than those which are deemed to have been produced in a less humane manner.
I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Ribble Valley--that, while the supermarket chains are in their benevolent phase, one may be able to make a judgment about what type of bacon or pork to buy, but it is different when one dines in a restaurant. I suppose one could ask whether the bacon on the plate is British. I am sure that the waiter would say, "Certainly sir, of course it is British. We serve nothing else." Of course the restaurant is unlikely to expect anyone to be particularly seeking Dutch or some other sort of bacon. There is a problem, and there is no instant solution.
I am encouraged by the representations that my right hon. and hon. Friends have made to Government Departments to encourage them to consider the purchase of British meat products. Opposition Members sometimes seem to slide back in time and act like socialists of the old school when they ask why it is not possible to demand that the armed forces serve only British bacon. They seem to have forgotten that we now operate in a world of competitive tendering and best value, and that people have no choice but to go for the cheapest as long as it is of equal standard.
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