Dairy Farming

That is also a useful intervention. Sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser, was quoted in the Farmers Guardian last week as saying that DEFRA's refusal to tackle the badger population was a "source of great exasperation". He went on to suggest that the TB epidemic could put an end to dairy farming unless the Government considered a cull of infected badgers. As I said, the Welsh Assembly is at last moving ahead with a programme that includes an element of active wildlife management. It is being piloted in the north part of my constituency and is a brave move. One of the new emerging challenges for the Secretary of State is unquestionably what I regard as the unbalanced and distorted healthy food agenda being promoted from some quarters, which seeks to demonise dairy products. I am thinking principally of that increasingly powerful arm of Government, the Food Standards Agency. There was a time when I thought that the job of the FSA was to help to ensure that the hygiene and safety practices in the production and sale of food were of a sufficient standard to avoid the risk of illness or worse, but I see from its recent press releases, and from its website this morning, that it sees one of its main jobs as warning people away from dairy products, as part of its campaign against saturated fat. The website names those products: cheese, cream and ice cream. I see from a press release of the past few days that it wants us to abandon full fat milk. Frankly, many of my constituents do not want their taxes to be used to fund that kind of nonsense. Obesity in Britain is not caused by eating dairy products. In Westminster Hall this morning you can see, Dr. McCrea, a group of some of the healthiest parliamentarians. I see marathon runners, rugby players and fell runners: an incredibly healthy group. It is no accident that they are also some of the proudest and fiercest advocates and defenders of dairy products, the eating of which is part of a healthy lifestyle. The dairy sector is being made a scapegoat by the Government because of their rank failure to tackle the more profound drivers of obesity in this country: the British obsession with getting drunk; the collapse of sport in schools; the end of cookery in schools, driven by the health and safety madness that has affected a generation of young people; and the proliferation of poorly regulated low quality fast food outlets in many town centres. I do not mean McDonald's, which has been good news for farmers in recent years, but the proliferation of low quality cheap fast food. Will the Minister join me in condemning the Food Standards Agency's misguided approach to dairy products? Does he agree that the Government must not give mixed signals to the dairy sector, sending Ministers to farming conferences one day, to speak up the British dairy sector, and channelling money to anti-dairy campaigns the next? Will he join my call for more sense from the Food Standards Agency? I could say more about lack of investment in the sector, driven by a lack of confidence and certainty about the future, but I want to bring my remarks to a close to enable other hon. Members to contribute. I am sure that some of them will talk in more detail about the ombudsman. I support the creation of an ombudsman. The supply chain has been characterised by accusations and mutual mistrust, and we need somehow to get beyond that. There needs to be recognition of a partnership between farmer, processor and retailer, with common sense in the relationship. My hope is that the ombudsman will have enough powers and clear guidance to make that happen. However, I want to say a word of caution about what the ombudsman can achieve. I have talked to some farmers who believe that the ombudsman can somehow radically change the price they get for milk, and I think that view may be naive. Unless the Minister can correct me, I do not understand that it would be the job of the ombudsman to fix prices. I should welcome the Minister's remarks on how he sees the ombudsman's role in the dairy sector and with respect to milk prices. I am grateful to have had this opportunity to raise concerns affecting the dairy sector in the UK and in particular my constituency. I am conscious that perhaps I have not covered all the issues, and optimistic that other hon. Members will fill in the gaps. I look forward to the Minister's giving us good news and reasons to be optimistic about the dairy sector in the years ahead.