Subordinate Legislation
Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Regulations 2010 (Draft)
Prohibited Procedures on Protected Animals (Exemptions) (Scotland) Regulations 2010 (Draft)
We will take evidence on two affirmative instruments. The Subordinate Legislation Committee has made no comments on the instruments. I welcome to the committee Richard Lochhead MSP, the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment; Ian Strachan, head of the veterinary and science team; Andrew Voas, veterinary adviser in the animal health and welfare division; and Kirsten Simonnet-Lefevre, legal adviser to the Scottish Government.
Members may ask questions about the content of the two instruments before we move to a formal debate on them. Officials can contribute at this stage but cannot participate in the debate. I invite the cabinet secretary to make a brief opening statement on both instruments.
The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and the Environment (Richard Lochhead)
It is a pleasure to be back before the committee.
The draft Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Regulations 2010 implement European Union legislation and provide for general welfare requirements that apply in the case of farmed animals. In addition, the regulations provide for specific additional welfare requirements that apply in the case of laying hens, calves and pigs.
Meat chickens are the last major intensive sector not to have their own welfare rules governing the conditions under which they are kept. Schedule 2, which has been added to the regulations, fills that gap by transposing Council directive 2007/48/EC, which lays down minimum rules for the protection of conventionally reared meat chickens.
This package of measures for improving meat chicken welfare sets conditions from the time that chickens are brought to production sites until they leave for slaughter. In addition, all birds will be subject to post-mortem inspections in the slaughterhouse, and records will be kept of possible indications of poor on-farm welfare.
A 12-week public consultation was undertaken on the transposition of the directive; nine responses were received. The industry was content with the proposals.
The United Kingdom, including Scotland, is the largest meat chicken producer in the EU. Every year around 850 million meat chickens are produced in the UK; the figure for the EU is 4 billion. The transposition of the directive will ensure level standards for producers throughout the EU.
As well as implementing new conditions for the welfare of meat chickens, the draft regulations consolidate the Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Regulations 2000, as amended. That consolidation will aid the farming community by bringing together all the welfare requirements for farmed animals under the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006.
My officials and I are happy to answer members’ questions on the draft regulations. Do you wish me to move to the next set of regulations?
Yes.
Section 20 of the Animal Health and Welfare (Scotland) Act 2006 makes it an offence for any person to interfere with the bone structure or sensitive tissue of an animal. However, procedures that are carried out for medical reasons, such as the amputation of a diseased or badly damaged limb, an operation to remove a growth or to repair tissue, and animal dentistry, are exempted.
The 2006 act allows Scottish ministers to exempt other procedures by regulation to allow most existing farm animal husbandry practices to continue for the general health and welfare of the individual animal, flock or herd, for necessary animal identification purposes or to ensure handler safety. The schedules in the draft Prohibited Procedures on Protected Animals (Exemptions) (Scotland) Regulations 2010 list the procedures that have been exempted from the general prohibition in the 2006 act. Amendments have been made to three of the schedules.
Schedule 3, relating to birds, has been amended to implement provisions in Council directive 2007/43/EC that lay down minimum rules on the beak trimming of meat chickens, for the protection of chickens that are kept for meat production. Schedule 3 has also been amended to remove the date that would, in effect, have implemented from the end of 2010 a complete ban on the beak trimming of laying hens to control feather pecking and cannibalism.
My decision not to implement a complete ban on the practice was taken on the advice of the Farm Animal Welfare Council which, following a review of the available research, concluded that a ban on beak trimming should be deferred until it can be reliably demonstrated under commercial conditions that laying hens can be managed by other means that will not pose a greater risk to their welfare. The rest of the UK is adopting a similar policy.
I have also accepted the Farm Animal Welfare Council’s recommendation that, for welfare reasons, routine beak trimming of laying hens should be performed only using the infrared method, which, research has shown, does not demonstrate evidence of chronic pain or result in chronic adverse consequences for nerve function.
Schedule 4, relating to sheep, has been amended—again on the advice of the Farm Animal Welfare Council—to improve the welfare of lambs by prohibiting surgical castration and surgical tail docking unless those are performed by a veterinary surgeon. The tail docking of sheep over three months of age is also prohibited unless that is performed by a veterinary surgeon.
Schedule 6, relating to equine animals, has been amended to remove the exemption, under authorisation, for hot branding, which was previously permitted for the purpose of identification. Welfare concerns were raised with me about the practice, with cross-party support from the committee and elsewhere. In addition, a recent change in the law that introduced a requirement for all equine animals to be microchipped made the continuation of the exemption difficult to justify. My decision to ban the practice entirely is in the best welfare interests of the animals concerned.
Finally, we have taken the opportunity to consolidate. The draft regulations revoke and replace the Prohibited Procedures on Protected Animals (Exemptions) Scotland Regulations 2007 and the Prohibited Procedures on Protected Animals (Exemptions) (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2009.
I will be happy, with all of my—hopefully—supportive officials, to answer members’ questions about those issues.
Agreed. [Laughter.]
Some members have indicated that they have questions.
Strictly speaking, this is not a question. It is only a few months since I first brought the issue of hot branding to the cabinet secretary’s attention. I put on record my congratulations on such a quick response to my request that the issue be dealt with.
I am of course in favour of increasing the welfare standards for meat chickens, but I want to make certain that we are not introducing anything with differential timing from that in the rest of Europe. As I am sure the cabinet secretary is aware, there are question marks about the same legislation for laying hens being introduced at different times in the rest of Europe and Britain. Can you give an assurance that all of Europe will come into line at the same time on the welfare standards and that our producers will not be put at a competitive disadvantage?
John Scott makes an important point. As he says, it is important that we monitor the situation to ensure that we all move at the same pace. However, the purpose of the directive concerned is to raise standards throughout Europe. It is fairly safe to say that the vast majority, if not all, of the meat chicken producers in Scotland already meet the standards that are being laid down, so the directive should not be too onerous. It applies to those who keep more than 500 meat chickens. As the committee will be aware, chicken production is fairly large scale and is in the hands of one or two large companies, which already meet the standards and are content with the proposals.
I had a similar question to John Scott’s, but you have answered that. The poultry meat industry in Scotland is concentrated, in that about five companies control about 80 per cent of the meat chicken production. However, the regulatory impact assessment concedes that there is a high likelihood that the smaller non-company producers will not be able to cope with the added costs that come with the higher welfare standards and will therefore “leave the industry”. Has an assessment been done of the impact that that will have? For example, has consideration been given to employment issues or to whether the effect will be focused in particular localities?
I also want to follow up on Bill Wilson’s point about equine hot branding. The process has moved ahead with some pace and with cross-party support. The cabinet secretary will have received a letter from an individual in Ross-shire, Deborah Davy, who questions the timing of the measure given that a piece of research is being undertaken by the equine pain research unit at the University of Bristol school of veterinary science, which is due to report later this month and which might shed light on some of the pain aspects of hot branding. She says:
“At present there is no suitable method of distance readable identification except hot branding available for use”
with some ponies. The committee has a strong sense that the Government is pursuing the correct direction of travel, but it would be helpful if you or your officials would address the two points that Deborah Davy raises in her letter.
On the impact of the meat chickens directive on smaller producers, it is clear that the sector has a fast production cycle with a quick turnaround, with smaller producers moving in quickly and leaving quickly. It will be down to the individual judgment of each smaller producer whether it wants to continue to produce meat chickens, taking into account the potential additional costs that it will have to meet under the directive. I do not have a regional breakdown, but I am happy to look into that to find out whether we have more details. I will let the committee know about that.
On hot branding, I have not seen that letter personally, but I am aware that a letter has been sent to committee members from the Exmoor Pony Society indicating that it might be carrying out research into hot branding. We considered the issue in detail after members of Parliament, particularly committee members, brought it to our attention. We recognise that there will be microchipping of all horses in Scotland in any case. Hot branding is not an ideal method of identification, especially during winter, when the ponies have grown winter coats and it is difficult to read the branding. It is, therefore, not even the most effective way to mark the ponies, irrespective of the welfare concerns, which are also important. We will reflect on any research that is carried out by the Exmoor Pony Society and, if we are struck by the outcome of that research, we will be willing to look again at the matter. However, we do not want to hold up the regulations while we wait a long time for research to be carried out, published and peer reviewed. We feel that this is the appropriate time to make the regulations.
10:15
Like other committee members, I am not convinced by the arguments in the letter that we have received from the Exmoor Pony Society. The horses will have to be caught and microchipped anyway, and if the owner wanted to do anything else to them, they would have to be caught again. I am happy with the cabinet secretary’s explanation in response to the society’s arguments.
The letter to which Elaine Murray refers claims that there is no peer-reviewed literature demonstrating that hot branding causes pain, but committee members may remember that I brought a paper on that to our private session last week. Unfortunately, I have left it in my office today, but I am happy to provide it to all members of the committee for reference, to show that there is peer-reviewed literature demonstrating the pain and suffering caused by hot branding.
I reinforce the cabinet secretary’s message that there is clear evidence to show that hot branding is not a reliable method of long-distance identification, including research by a collection of PhD students who tried to identify horses across the distance of a horse show arena and were unable to identify all the horses. Clearly, hot branding is not a reliable form of identification. There is also evidence from veterinary equine specialists stating that, in veterinary training schools, they are often taught to recognise up to 40 horses by coat colour. I believe that the herd in Scotland is nine. If vets can recognise up to 40 horses by coat colour, I suspect that the owner can manage to recognise nine by coat colour without any difficulty. To be fair, I do not think that the owner has suggested that hot branding should continue—I do not know about that and I am not casting aspersions on that individual.
Many owners of livestock recognise individual sheep and cattle in commercial herds, so most horse owners will recognise their individual horses.
I want to address the issue of broiler chickens. I applaud the new regulations. Will the labelling on the chickens at point of sale reflect the higher welfare standard? We need to differentiate between products in the market. The cabinet secretary will be aware that chickens are still being imported from outwith the EU that are raised to a lower welfare standard. I am thinking particularly of chickens from the far east. Will the consumer be able to differentiate between chickens that have been raised to different welfare standards? Will the labelling in Scotland, at any rate, be able to reflect that?
We do not yet know the outcome of the discussions on the EU labelling regulations, which are making their way through the process at the moment, although we have expressed Scotland’s view that we want managed country of origin labelling on certain meat products. As part of that debate, which is taking place in Europe just now, we are discussing the issue of welfare labelling. I recall from one recent meeting of the agriculture and fisheries council that the debate is not as simple as we hoped it would be, given that some countries take the view that there are too many labels and ways of defining welfare. Also, as you say, some countries would claim to have better welfare standards than other countries. We are not sure where that European debate is going.
I urge the producers of Scottish meat produce, including poultry and meat chickens, to recognise that they have a good welfare story to tell once they reach the standards that are set out in the regulations and that they should tell the consumer. A large part of it is in the hands of the producers themselves, and I urge them to take advantage of that.
Item 3 is the formal debate on the draft Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Regulations 2010. I remind everyone that officials cannot participate in this debate or the debate on the other set of regulations that we are considering today. I invite the cabinet secretary to move the motion and to make any further remarks that he may want to make.
Motion moved,
That the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee recommends that the Welfare of Farmed Animals (Scotland) Regulations 2010 (SSI/2010 draft) be approved.—[Richard Lochhead.]
Motion agreed to.
Item 4 is the formal debate on the draft Prohibited Procedures on Protected Animals (Exemptions) (Scotland) Regulations 2010.
Motion moved,
That the Rural Affairs and Environment Committee recommends that the Prohibited Procedures on Protected Animals (Exemptions) (Scotland) Regulations 2010 (SSI/2010 draft) be approved.—[Richard Lochhead.]
Motion agreed to.
That concludes our consideration of subordinate legislation. There will be a brief suspension while we change witnesses. I thank the cabinet secretary and his colleagues.
Thank you, convener. I am tempted to stay for the next session but, unfortunately, I cannot.
10:21
Meeting suspended.
10:23
On resuming—