British Agriculture and Food Labelling

It is important to know the truth about what we buy. The description on the outside can be technically accurate, but a million miles from reality. For instance, in 1997, some people thought that they had elected a Labour Government. If I may pour some opprobrium on myself, I can say that in 1995 I led my then 11-year-old younger brother along the righteous path of supporting Blackburn Rovers on the prospectus that they were premier league champions and therefore the best team in the country—all technically true at the time. It has since led to significant disappointment, albeit character building. Accurate labelling of British meat produce, however, actually does matter. It matters because consumers have the right to know what it is that they are eating. As things stand, lambs imported from France but slaughtered in the UK can be passed off as British produce. Pig carcases brought in from Ireland and processed into sausages in the UK can be sold as British sausages, and milk from Belgium that has been churned in the UK can be sold as butter from Britain. When consumers make their choices, they should do so with the fullest possible range of information. The current situation is not acceptable, because it effectively allows shoppers to be conned into believing that they are buying British when they are not. It is not simply a matter of wanting to buy British for the sake of it. Indeed, many consumers use buying British as a reliable proxy for shopping ethically. That is the case because British standards of animal welfare, and of environmental impact in farming, are among the highest in the world. Of course, buying genuinely British produce means reducing food miles, and significantly cutting the carbon emissions involved in food production. Mandatory country of origin labelling would allow us to make those ethical choices with confidence. Of course, investing in the best possible animal welfare standards and in the highest environmental specifications is not cheap, as has already been pointed out. Even with mandatory labelling, we still face the problem of the produce of other countries gaining a competitive advantage from lower standards. Equalisation of standards across the EU to British levels is crucial if we are to tackle climate change, improve animal welfare standards and give our farmers the benefit that they deserve for taking the lead in ethical food production. But the Government are wrong if they think that that is all we need to do. If I were permitted to merge the Conservative motion with the Government amendment—taking out the odd word, of course—we would have a perfectly presentable proposition, but even combined, those solutions would be weak and inadequate. The Conservative motion is fine as far as it goes—there is nothing in it to disagree with—but I would question why the concentration is simply on country of origin labelling. If we are to empower consumers, we must ensure that they have information on environmental impact, such as the carbon, energy and water use impacts of the produce, as well as country of origin. Given that British produce incurs fewer food miles and has a more benign environmental impact, environmental labelling would also be a boost for British farming. We surely do not want some kind of complicated, expensive and bureaucratic multiple scheme. The answer must be a simple and straightforward labelling system that incorporates all that information.