Bushmeat Trade (Hansard, 22 July 2002)

§ Mr. Gardiner
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if her Department has approached Governments in countries in Central and West Africa to establish mechanisms to control the illegal international trade in bushmeat. [70305]

§ Mr. Meacher
As a result of my Department's representations at the eleventh Conference of CITES Parties in April 2000, the CITES Bushmeat Working Group was established. We have contributed £55,000 to the Group, which aims to help Central and West African range states develop and implement their own solutions, including the revision and harmonisation of their wildlife policies and legislation. We have also funded research analysing existing knowledge and expertise on the bushmeat trade, highlighting gaps in data and understanding, and making recommendations on further action. The results of this research have been made available to the CITES Working Group and we expect them to be discussed at the Group's next meeting, due to take place in Brazzaville later this month. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) hopes to represent the UK at this meeting.
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Through the FCO, we have also been using the UK diplomatic missions in Harare, Accra, Abuja, Cairo, Pretoria, Kampala, Abidjan, Maseru, Dakar, Luanda, Nairobi, Kigali, Mbabane and Tunis to raise awareness of the restrictions on importing meat into the UK.

§ Mr. Gardiner
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what plans she has to raise the issue of the unsustainable bushmeat trade at the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species. [70301]

§ Mr. Meacher
The Secretariat to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has prepared a progress report on the work of the CITES Bushmeat Working Group, and a draft Decision extending the life of the Working Group, for consideration by the forthcoming Conference of CITES Parties in November. We shall support the draft Decision and continue to encourage and support the work of the Working Group.

§ Mr. Gardiner
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what representations she has made to the Department for International Development to establish a joint approach to tackling the unsustainable bushmeat trade. [70303]

§ Mr. Meacher
The Department and the Department for International Development (MID) already takes a joint approach to tackling unsustainable trade in bushmeat, and are in regular contact on this issue. For example, officials participate in the UK Tropical Forest Forum's Bushmeat Working Group; DEFRA and FCO are represented on the Steering Group for DfID's Wildlife and Poverty research study; DflD represented UK (including DEFRA) interests at the IUCN's Bushmeat Seminar in Yaounde in September 2001, and officials from DflD and the Overseas Development Institute produced DEFRA's bushmeat paper for the last CITES Conference in April 2000.