Action on animal health and welfare
The last Conservative Government established the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC) to monitor the welfare of farm animals and we remain committed to upholding and improving welfare standards.
We will continue to advocate improvements to the conditions in which farm animals are kept, such as the 2012 ban on conventional cages forlaying hens, and will fight to ensure that such standards are raisedequally across the EU.
We will promote animal welfare at an international level and work towards the inclusion of production standards in WTO negotiations.
Over the past decade animal disease outbreaks, many of them triggered or exacerbated by Government incompetence, have cost the country billions of pounds.
We believe that sharing the responsibility and cost of tackling animal disease with the farming industry is right in principle and can deliver public benefits. However, there must be genuine industry involvement in the development of animal health policy before the costs are apportioned.
Farmers who are being asked to contribute more to the costs of disease control fairly expect that the Government does its bit to keep disease out ofthe country. However the current border agency does not put sufficient emphasis on detecting smuggling. Since 2007 the number of frontline staff to detect illegal products of animal origin at our ports of entry has been cut by 40 per cent, and we now have only six dedicated sniffer dogs.
We will develop an animal health strategy in partnership with farmers and veterinarians, the cost of which will only then be shared fairly between Government and industry.
We will create voluntary, non-statutory rural advisory groups to ensure that Ministers understand rural concerns and decisions are taken in full knowledge of their impact on rural areas.
We will reinforce our borders by refocusing existing police and Home Office resources to create a dedicated border police force, which would take action to combat smuggling and trafficking of all kinds, including products of animal origin.
The most pressing animal health problem in the UK today is bovine TB. Conservatives want to see healthy cattle living alongside healthy wildlife but in many parts of the country we have neither. The continued advance of bovine TB is costing taxpayers over £80 million a year and devastating farm businesses, but still the Government fails to produce a credible package of measures to tackle the disease.
As a recent report by the Farm Crisis Network made clear, the disease istaking an enormous emotional, as well as financial toll, on farming families. We cannot continue to stand by as bovine TB claims some 40,000 cattle a year, destroys livelihoods, and makes further inroads intothe public purse.
We will immediately implement a package of measures under the existing animal health budget to reduce the spread of bovine TB, including increased testing in high risk areas, continued development of vaccines, and validation of the polymerase chain reaction test to detect infected badger setts.
The development of vaccines is an important part of the long-term solution but we do not believe that steps to eradicate the disease can wait until 2014 whenan oral vaccine for badgers may be available. Indeed, the efficacy of vaccination is severely undermined in areas where infection in badgers is high.
We will introduce a carefully managed and science-led policy of badger control in areas of high and persistent levels of TB in cattle.