06/04/2023 Trade deal and battery eggs; Appeal against wild camping ruling; Pork labelling - Publication Date |
- Apr 06, 2023
- Episode Duration |
- 00:13:29
UK egg producers say the new trans-Pacific free trade deal is bad for animal welfare and bad for the British egg industry. The British Egg Industry Council fears that UK animal welfare standards will be undermined and producers will be put at a commercial disadvantage by the latest post-Brexit trade agreement, the CPTPP. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose members include Mexico, Canada and Japan, will have quotas and permanent limits for imports of ‘sensitive’ products like beef and lamb - but not eggs. The Council's chief executive, Mark Williams, says 99% of Mexico’s eggs come from birds that are kept in battery cages, a method of production which was banned in the UK in 2012.
We’re talking about food labelling all this week. The Government is expected to consult later this year on plans to introduce mandatory welfare labelling for poultry and pork products with labels explaining how the livestock’s been farmed. There are already many different voluntary schemes with labels on pork relating to how pigs are reared, but is focusing on production methods alone a good measure of animal welfare? Cambridge University scientists have come up with a system of measuring welfare that uses what they say is a reliable comparison across different types of pig farming.
People who want to camp out on Dartmoor may have that right returned. The Dartmoor National Park Authority has been granted permission to appeal against a High Court decision in January that meant the right to wild camp anywhere on Dartmoor was removed. The ruling came about after a landowner challenged a longstanding assumption that the public had an automatic right to camp without permission.
Presented by Caz Graham and produced by Beatrice Fenton.