§ The Earl of Caithnessasked Her Majesty's Government:
Further to the Written Answer by Baroness Hayman on 25 April (WA 228), under what market conditions they will "consider pressing the European Commission to introduce private storage aid for sheep meat and (possibly) for beef and pig meat as well". [HL1941]
§ Baroness HaymanOur principal concern at present is to increase the availability of British lamb, beef and pork to the UK market. We are anxious that, as far as164WA disease control measures allow, as many animals as possible should enter the human food chain and we have recently announced changes in disease restrictions to facilitate this.
To make a case for private storage aid in any of these sectors we should need to be able to satisfy the European Commission on three points:
- That the market is operating normally;
- That there is significant excess of supply over demand, leading to marked price weakness; and
- That there is a reasonable prospect that meat taken into store can be released on to the market between three and seven month's storage, without leading to further market disruption.
These conditions are currently not met. In particular, the Commission has indicated that it does not believe that private storage aid for sheepmeat should be granted at present (despite relatively weak prices) because most of the meat to be stored would be hogget (i.e. old season's lamb) meat which would not readily find a market when released from storage, as the market would then be dominated by new season's lamb.
Market prices for beef and pigmeat are not sufficiently weak to justify an approach to the Commission in respect of private storage aid for these products.