One law for us?

FARMERS and others should warmly welcome any legislation which seeks to improve welfare standards for livestock. As long, that is, as it applies to everyone and we all play by the same rules.

- Chris Rundle

Otherwise the piecemeal introduction of new standards - which are almost inevitably going to raise production costs - will cause enormous imbalance.

So in theory farmers should be applauding the fact that ministers are tabling legislation to ensure both laying hens and lambs will benefit from better welfare regimes.

Under these proposals all “colony cage” systems across the laying hen sector would be phased out by 2032 - a measure which will also extend to include smaller producers. Proposals for tighter restrictions on sheep mutilation practices such as castration and tail docking, which cause pain to lambs and are often carried out without pain relief, are also being consulted on.

Fine so far. But let’s not forget what happened last time the UK took the lead on introducing higher animal welfare systems. In 1999 the EU banned the battery hen cage but allowed 13 years for every member state to comply.

Labour rushed to the moral high ground and went it alone on implementing the ban within the UK borders. The result was that huge amounts of rearing equipment which could no longer be used went on the market and was snapped up eagerly by Eastern European states - which immediately started using it and undercutting UK producers with massive volumes of cheap exports.

There is no doubt that the higher standards will play well with the public, 94 per cent of whom, according to the latest survey, oppose the use of any form of cages for laying hens and whose buying habits demonstrate a distinct and developing preference for barn-reared or free-range product.

And it's about time the nettle was grasped and the poultry sector got rid of the stigma which has hovered over it for decades. Currently around 20 per cent of UK egg production comes from millions of hens now housed - since the battery ban - in so-called “enriched colony cages” which can accommodate as many as 90 birds.