Farm Animal Welfare

Thank you for contacting me about the welfare of farm animals.

As a Patron of the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation, I share your concerns and I would like to assure you that I will continue to push the Government to remain committed to upholding our world-leading animal welfare standards and to delivering a series of ambitious reforms, as outlined in the Action Plan for Animal Welfare. I routinely campaign for better animal welfare, and recently discussed welfare issues with the League Against Cruel Sports in a podcast, which can be found here.

I have been assured that the Government is committed to maintaining our world-leading farm animals welfare standards, one of the ways in which the they want to strengthen protections is animal confinement, and they are actively exploring options to phase out the use of cages in farming, including enriched cages for laying hens, farrowing crates for pigs and cages for breeding pheasants and partridges.

The Government’s Animal Health and Welfare Pathway will prioritise areas for further improvement in the health and welfare for pigs, cattle, sheep and poultry. One of the Pathway’s prioritises will be to support a transition away from enriched cages for laying hens.

More broadly, I am aware that ministers are taking action to improve the health and wellbeing of farm animals through the Animal Welfare (Kept Animals) Bill, which will ban exports of livestock and equines for slaughter and fattening.

Of course, if you do have specific concerns about the welfare of an animal, I would recommend reporting it to the police or to the RSPCA.

Thank you again for taking the time to contact me.