Hen welfare law raises concerns

SCOTTISH politicians and farming leaders have this week highlighted the lack of commitment by some EU member states to forthcoming welfare legislation on laying hens.

The Welfare of Laying Hens Directive emerged from Brussels almost a decade ago with an implementation date of January 2012 and Scottish egg producers have been working towards complying with a move away from battery cage production.

But in a presentation to the EU agricultural committee this week, egg producers reckoned 83 million eggs each day, or about a third of total EU production, would still be produced illegally under the new legislation by the implementation date.

Scottish and UK producers have invested and are on track to meet the deadline, but should other producers get an extension, they risk being undermined by cheaper imports, raising fears of a repetition of the situation the pig sector faced when the UK moved unilaterally to ban sow stalls ahead of the rest of Europe.

Speaking after a meeting with the head of the EU's animal welfare unit, NFU Scotland vice-president Nigel Miller said he had urged the commission to use monitoring to deal with the potential problem of illegally produced stocks of eggs circulating within the EU. He added there was also a need for measures to ensure that any eggs imported into the EU met the higher EU welfare standards.

Scottish MEP Alyn Smith said he was concerned about the "remarkable intransigence" on the part of the European Commission to ensure compliance with higher animal welfare standards, "which a number of producers have been unable or unwilling to invest to meet in time".

Although the destruction of eggs and poultry meat produced outwith the legislation was an option, Smith did not favour this, preferring a clear grading system, along with an intra-community ban on products from battery cages.

"We, as legislators, are faced with an unappealing prospect: either to junk millions of tonnes of food, which would be unconscionable, or to bend the rules for tardy producers.

"The idea of destroying food appals me, but to avoid moral hazard I think it is logical and sensible to bring in a new system to clearly identify such product."

This suggestion for a new system was put forward by the egg producers in making their presentation to the committee.

The producers also requested a new production code for eggs from enriched cage systems. This would differentiate eggs produced in this way from battery-produced eggs.