Agriculture Bill amendment to ban low standard imports defeated in Parliament

NFU Cymru president John Davies: “NFU Cymru has been fighting hard on the standards issue for a long time now. We have been at the heart of a broad coalition of farming, consumer, environmental and animal welfare organisations from across the UK that has been making the case for upholding high standards in any future trade deals that the UK makes with third countries.

“Unfortunately, without this amendment the Bill lacks any formal requirement to uphold our farming production standards as we negotiate trade deals and in our general trade policy.

“We cannot have a trade policy which requires our farmers to compete against food produced to lower standards.

“Regrettably, the Bill will now leave the House of Commons without the amendments that we would like to have seen, so we will now focus our lobbying efforts on securing the amendments that we need to see at the House of Lords stages.”

Christopher Price, RBST: “It seems clear the Bill is going to become law as drafted. Now we need to move on and consider how the new powers it creates should be exercised.

“We know most of the environmental aspects will be delivered through the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, but we have heard very little about what that means for farmers in practice.

“And we have heard nothing on the other aspects, including the improvement of animal health and welfare and the conservation of native livestock.

“These powers have the potential to radically change livestock farming for the better and the sector needs to be focusing on what is required if we are to capitalise on the opportunities.”