Confusion surrounds cage ban deadline
Many IEC delegates were left feeling more confused than ever after listening to Andrea Gavinelli attempt to explain what will happen when the European Union ban on conventional laying cages comes into force at the beginning of next year.
Mr Gavinelli, who is the head of the animal welfare section at the European Commission, spent more than an hour speaking and being questioned at the latest International Egg Commission conference in London. Much of the confusion arose because on the one hand Mr Gavinelli said that the ban would go ahead as planned on January 1 next year, yet on the other hand he seemed to accept that non-compliant eggs would continue to be produced and that the commission was looking at possible measures to prevent such eggs being traded outside the member states in which they originated.
One Colombian delegate openly told Mr Gavinelli that he was more confused after the talk than before it. A delegate from South Africa seized on an analogy by asking the EU official how anyone could be half pregnant. Either conventional cage eggs were banned or they were not. And John Campbell, chairman of Glenrath Farms, left the meeting saying he was still no wiser about what would happen at the beginning of next year. He seemed to voice the mood of the meeting.
Serious concerns about the forthcoming ban have been voiced in the United Kingdom and other EU states where egg producers have made the investment necessary to ensure that they will comply with the new regulations when they come into force. It is estimated that as many as 30 per cent of hens in the European Union will still be in conventional cages when the ban comes into effect. The egg industry in this country fears that if ’illegal’ eggs continue to be produced next year they could find their way onto the British market, unfairly undercutting British producers and doing serious damage to our domestic industry.
During the meeting in London John Campbell told Mr Gavinelli that the European egg industry was in an "absolute mess." He said, "The old cages are still there, the new cages are there and there are a lot of farmers losing a lot of money, coupled with the increase in grain price. I just want to ask a very simple question. What are you going to do when countries don’t comply with the legislation? What is going to happen then? We are told that a lot of them will not be able to comply. What is your code of practice for handling this situation because you have been very vague on it?"
He said the intention was to limit circulation as much as possible to "legal product" to protect the countries that were doing "the right job" and to ensure as much transparency as possible. Mr Gavinelli had earlier said that the ban would not be delayed.
"To modify the directive to give additional time is not the way, because those who paid money five years ago or three years ago to change the system do not want to see others having discounts," he said, although he went on to outline discussions that had taken place on how to deal with what he seemed to concede would be the inevitable continuation of conventional cage production following the implementation of the ban.
He said that a number of options for dealing with the issue had arisen in meetings with stakeholders – representatives of the whole food chain, from farmer to consumer. One option, he said, was to limit the circulation of non-compliant eggs. He was asked at the London meeting by a Scottish Government representative whether the EU would enact legislation to allow member states to take non-compliant eggs off the market. "We are working on legal possibilities for implementing measures," he said.
Another stakeholder suggestion was that non-compliant eggs should have a separate stamping code. He said another code for illegal egg was not reasonable. There have also been calls for equivalent animal welfare standards for third countries. He said that would involve long-term international trade negotiations.
Meurig Raymond, deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union, told Mr Gavinelli that he had recently returned from a trip to South America where huge investment was being put into ordinary laying cages in Argentina. "When I start thinking about the cost of cage production in the Argentine, of the use of GM soya in the feed, which is banned across the European Union, are you not concerned about the competitiveness of European egg producers going forward?" He said, " I am extremely concerned that we are going to find it difficult to compete in that global market place and we may end up exporting our production to other parts of the world where the standards are maybe not the same as ours."
Andrea Gavinelli said that consumers in the UK wanted farmers in the UK to take measures on animal welfare. He said that in many parts of Europe demand from consumers was going beyond the regulations; the demand for free range was growing more than the demand for enriched cages.
One thing for which the European Union has been criticised has been what many see as its failure to obtain accurate information about how far along the road to conversion egg producers are in each of the member states.
The EU said recently that some states had failed to supply the information needed so that it could accurately assess the current state of affairs. It issued another demand for all states to supply the requested information and set them a deadline of April 1 this year. British Egg Industry Council chief executive Mark Williams asked Andrea Gavinelli when he now expected to have the figures that would show the accurate position on the state of implementation.
He said he believed the EU had now received information from 18 or 19 of the member states. That leaves the EU still waiting for data from a number of the European Union’s 27 members. "Obviously we are reminding them to do their job as much as possible," he said. "I hope we will have the full scenario in the next few weeks."
Mr Gavinelli told IEC delegates that the EU needed to get as good a picture as possible of the way things stood at the moment and it needed to have clear legal instruments in order to prevent unfair competition when the conventional cage ban came into force.
