My Lords, this has been a really excellent debate. I find it quite astonishing, however, at the time of a huge public health crisis—not just in our country but across the world—due to poor diet, as well as an environmental crisis, that we would ever consider importing into our country food that was of lower standards. It worries me, because I agree with all the words that have been said by the Minister—I wish he were higher up the food chain, as it were—and I also sincerely accept his words that these standards will be maintained, somehow or another, but if that is true, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, pointed out, it was part of the manifesto, what precisely is the real objection to writing such a clause into the heart of the Bill?
We have worked, in the food industry and, indeed, through outfits such as the FSA, once chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and it has taken 20 years of UK public policy just to achieve clear front-of-pack labelling, yet right now we are considering doing trade deals with a country, the USA, that says it is concerned that
“labelling food with high sugar content … is not particularly useful in changing consumer behaviour”.
Would anyone say that about the way we market cigarettes? Would anyone in this country say that sugar is not a primary cause of obesity—or, indeed, the primary cause of under-12s going into hospital to have all their teeth out?
As has been mentioned, including by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, 40% of the food we eat is eaten outside of the home. In most cases, of course, it means that we as consumers have absolutely no clue about how the food gets to us and what it is.
Who remembers the horse meat scandal, which showed that the meat had travelled from some 10 destinations throughout Europe before finally ending up in burgers in well-known supermarkets? I do not see any way, unless it is written into the Bill, for us to stop this cheaper food coming here. Sadly, we know how often price affects the way people buy.
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The chemicals and additives that are added to the diets of American pork and beef animals are shocking. We all worry about antibiotic resistance and the prospect that the day might come when childbirth, or even a thorn in your finger that makes it go septic, could cause you to become very ill or even die. More than 50% of all the antibiotics consumed in America are consumed by pigs, cattle and chickens. It is no surprise that antibiotic-resistant illnesses are on the rise there. Surely that is something we need to prevent. Our standards in this respect are good. Our use of antibiotics is limited; we use them only in an emergency and not as a routine growth hormone.
There are other extreme examples of cruelty. I want to coin a phrase that was first said by the noble Lord, Lord Curry, about exporting our own types of animal cruelty. American pigs are given hormones to encourage them to run around and build up their muscle content because that makes them better to eat. I have often though that if we did something like that to Labradors, the world would crash to a halt; having kept both pigs and Labradors, I would say that pigs have the edge in intelligence and sentience. If we allow this, we are also saying that we tacitly approve of this system of rearing animals, including in terms of what they eat.
As the noble Lord, Lord Trees, said, we must import or export our emissions. That means that we need trade standards that will examine how products have been grown and what they have necessitated. The finance industry is already way ahead of policy in setting targets on products that depend on deforestation or practices that actively encourage and cause climate change; as long-term investments over a 10-year plan, they will become stranded assets because the world will not deal with them. Surely, we should appreciate, enhance and deeply embed this principle in our Agriculture Bill.
As has been pointed out by many noble Lords, there is a huge weight of public opinion. People care about their food. They care about their farmers. They care about their standards. We need to be open with Parliament. Like the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, the excellent amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Curry, will allow us to have a commission that puts what is in a Trade Bill before Parliament if we need to examine it. We need both these things put into law; both of them need muscle and power. If we do not do this, we will not be able to level our playing field and carry on producing our own food to a high standard; it will be unfair to us, to consumers and to our children.