In the latest episode of Law Pod UK, Rosalind English discusses the Agriculture Bill with Peter Stevenson, senior policy advisor to the campaign organisation Compassion in World Farming. We have chosen the rearing of food animals as our focus for this interview because of the circumstances in which the current pandemic is said to have arisen; the zoonotic event of an animal virus passing to humans in the pathogen-rich wet markets of China. Intensively farmed “wildlife” may sound an alien concept, if not something of an oxymoron, but the dangers of industrial farming of animals are becoming increasingly apparent in the West.

The main concern is that there are no provisions in the framework bill to protect UK food producers from being undercut by imported food from countries where standards of animal welfare and hygiene do not apply.

See Rafe Jenning’s post on the salient features of the Agriculture Bill 2020 for more details about its provisions for “public money for public goods”, Environmental Land Management Schemes that promote these goods such as improvements to soil health, pollinator density and biodiversity, all activities that the market does not sufficiently incentivise.

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