§ Mr. Crouchasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (1) if it is his policy to encourage other developed countries, in concert with Great Britain, to limit their food consumption in order to help those nations now facing starvation;
(2) if he will make a statement about the Press interview he gave in Rome on 6th October 1974 after addressing the World Food Conference.
§ Mr. PeartIt is for each Government to decide what course to follow, but, as I said during my Press conference in Rome, it would be extremely difficult to change well-established dietary habits without rationing of some sort and I reject this as a solution. I then went on to say that there were some people in this country whom I should like to see eating more meat. It is in any case impossible to change food production overnight, so that cutting meat consumption in developed countries would not help the developing countries in their immediate crisis. The most effective way of ensuring that this crisis does not continue indefinitely is to increase food production in developing 199W countries themselves, so that as far as possible food is available where it is required and we avoid the very real difficulties of moving large quantities of grain about the world.