I will not.
I want to end with a stark and urgent warning. Last month, the Food Standards Agency had to issue a health warning after a rise in salmonella cases from Polish eggs and poultry meat, with 200 cases reported in 2023. That risk only grows when we open the floodgates to eggs and poultry produced to lower standards. Professor Elliott warned me about antibiotics deployed en masse without veterinary approval, Government control, or knowledge of the antibiotics’ provenance. Such use and abuse of antibiotics is part of a frightening health picture. Professor Elliott cautioned that
“most countries do not have the infrastructure, regulations or oversight of drugs or pathogens—we could be opening up Pandora’s box.”
Batch-testing imports just will not work. Antibiotic resistance will spread from plate to platelet, and we would have a hard time swallowing that unpalatable morsel.
My constituents have record low trust in the Government. Removing water from the egg of an imprisoned chicken, drugged up on antibiotics that it did not need, and shipping that egg 5,000 miles to put into pancake mix and insipid sandwiches, is what my constituents have come to expect from this Tory Administration. Many of my constituents will not stomach toxic Tory trade deals, and we must urgently renegotiate them and have more mandatory parliamentary powers for future deals. We cannot afford the health cost to our population, the carbon cost to the planet, and the financial cost to our farmers. We have the chance to be world leaders in modern, world-beating, innovative, sustainable agriculture, and to proudly keep our high standards and improve our food security. Let us not lose that opportunity.
8.1 pm