Price is more important than welfare, poultry delegates told

European calls for animal welfare standards to be written into international trade deals were described as "challenging" by a Canadian delegate at the International Egg Commission (IEC) conference in Madrid.

A United States delegate openly questioned why South American and African countries struggling to feed their people should be required to adopt animal welfare standards introduced in Europe for "emotional" reasons.

Many egg producers in Europe are concerned about unfair international competition following the introduction of the European Union ban on conventional laying cages in January 2012.

Producers in the 27 member states of the EU must now use only enriched cage, barn or free range systems for egg production, but the EU is powerless to prevent battery eggs from other countries being imported and sold on the European market. Current World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules do not allow market protection on animal welfare grounds.

At the IEC conference in Madrid, the deputy director of production and agricultural markets in the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Esperanza Orellana, said that the agricultural model adopted by the EU, which was based on animal welfare, animal health and environmental concerns, incurred a higher cost for producers. She said that, whilst current WTO rules would not allow the EU to ban imports of eggs that did not meet EU welfare standards, she hoped that future negotiations would enable the union to do so.

Maria del Mar Fernandez Poza of Inprovo, the Spanish equivalent of the British Egg Industry Council (BEIC), said that the European production model was a response to the demands of consumers and animal welfare activists, but she said that if the European model was not viable there would be no European production model; there would only be production outside the EU. She said that the European Commission had to monitor the situation very closely to follow developments now that the ban on conventional battery cages was in force in the EU.

"EU egg production operates in a global market," she said. "We have 30 per cent fewer hens in enriched cages," she said. "We want third countries to be obliged to comply to make it fair. At the moment we are told this is not possible, but we will keep trying."

Prof Louise Fresco of the University of Amsterdam, told delegates at the conference that whilst many people professed to support high animal welfare standards publicly, when it came to shopping a lot of them continued to buy their food only on price. She said that there seemed to something of a disconnect between what people said and their shopping habits.

Prof Fresco said that it was important to reach a standard that was agreed across the world. She said that at the moment standards varied widely from country to country. "This is something we have to deal with," she said.

"We cannot afford to live in a world that has dual standards. We have one set of risk factors and one set of norms and rules, and regulations should apply to the entire sector and should apply to all consumers. I do not want to live in world where there is a lower standard for some consumers in some countries. As trade becomes increasingly globalised, we do not want to have the risk that there is somebody out there producing something in an unnamed country that does not adhere to standards, whether it is food safety or animal welfare or worker welfare, and gets exported to other countries where consumers will be put at risk," she said.

However, Prof Fresco was taken to task by Chad Gregory of United Egg Producers in the United States, who objected to the idea that an international welfare standard should be introduced.

"It is one thing for Europe and the US to have a position to take birds out of cages for social or emotional reasons, but it's a different thing to tell people in South America or Africa to do the same thing when they are struggling to feed their people."

Tim Lambert of Egg Farmers of Canada had earlier briefed delegates on progress in international trade negotiations. He told the Ranger that including animal welfare as a condition in any international agreements would be "challenging." He said, "Not every country has the same perspective as Europe does. It becomes one more thing to be negotiated and my first reaction is that it would be challenging."

He had already outlined to IEC delegates the difficulty in reaching international agreement in the Doha round of WTO talks. He said talks on agriculture had been ongoing since 1999, although in 2001 the agriculture talks had been brought together with talks about other aspects of international trade.

He said the negotiations had eventually stalled with the onset of the world financial crisis. Current hopes for international agreements were reliant upon bilateral and plurilateral negotiations. The European Union was currently in the process of negotiating a trade agreement with the United States, for example.

Tim Lambert told the Ranger that he could imagine that it would be very difficult to reach international agreement on animal welfare. "If you take an extreme example, Asian countries still have a lot of small backyard flocks. With outbreaks of AI and because countries there are trying to feed their populations, they are perhaps going to want to see if they can get birds into housing so they can better manage disease. It is easy for developed countries to look and see things from their own perspective, and Europe has a different perspective on welfare issues. If Europe wants to export something that is societal I think that would be challenging."

One Swiss delegate at the conference suggested that if it was not possible to prevent imports of lower welfare eggs through international agreement, then Europe should look at tackling the issue through labelling. "Let people know what they are buying," he said. "If you are buying pasta then let people know on the packaging that it includes either cage, barn or free range eggs."

Esperanza Orellana said that whilst shell eggs were clearly marked with the system used to produce them, with food products the labelling was not as clear.

She said that come companies made a point of promoting the fact that they did not use cage eggs in their products, but consumers needed to exert pressure. She said they needed to demand that the information be provided.