THE UK and EU governments must reconsider their stance on GM or risk putting livestock farmers out of business, warned MP Neil Parish.
Speaking at the National Office for Animal Health (NOAH) conference in London on February 15, Mr Parish – who has previously chaired the EU’s agriculture committee – said the current ban on GM left the UK in a ‘ridiculous’ situation where it allowed GM-fed meat to be imported but would not let its own farmers use it.
He said: “The majority of protein that we feed our animals comes from countries growing GM soya and in fact most of the meat that we import is reared on GM.
“If we are not careful all we will do is export our industry and then we will get the same meat imported into Britain fed on something we have banned for use in the UK.”
Panel members at the conference agreed Britain needed more home-grown proteins and could not rely on imported feed.
Mr Parish said farmers in the UK could grown more beans and peas to go into animal feed, and also called on regulators to look again at the ban on meat and bonemeal.
“There’s a huge amount of protein going to waste and it is something we are going to have to look at if we are going to feed ourselves and the world,” he said.
“I remember BSE and we don’t want to live through that again, but we could look at dedicated feed mills with poultry going to pigs and pigs going to poultry to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes again.”
© 2011 by UBM Information Ltd.
