I am quite concerned about what is going on here today. I do not think anybody wants to defend sow stalls or enriched cages, but we need considerably more detail and honesty. The 16 million “animals” that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Matt Vickers) referred to are all chickens—well, there are 200,000 pigs—so realistically, this is not exactly about “animals”; the petitioners could have put “birds”.
We saw one of the most infuriating attacks on poultry during the avian influenza outbreak: all free-range chickens were put inside, and no free-range eggs were available in our shops. There was not one campaign about that appalling treatment of poultry. It is entirely understandable why the Government insisted on locking up our chickens, but there was a real welfare issue and we heard not a squeak.
The same applies to all the other things we are dealing with here. My hon. Friend made a lovely speech, but 180,000 extra piglets will die if those crates are not used. That may be acceptable, but it is part of the story. The real problem is that unless the farmer can make a decent living—unless agriculture is profitable—he cannot undergo those kinds of losses, yet that is what we want.
We need to be much more honest about this issue. When we go to Tesco and see bacon from Brookfield Farm, it is coming from Denmark; it is not British-produced. When we get a letter about game birds, we should be aware that most of the game birds released in this country are bred in France. Because of the avian influenza over there, there has been a massive shortage of eggs and chicks. That is because the French reacted differently.
A lot of this animal welfare debate needs to be focused on truth and accuracy, and on the points my hon. Friends made earlier about what we import. We cannot expect to have better animal welfare if we do not honestly and accurately tell the truth about it to each other.