§ Mr. WallaceTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what progress has been made in persuading European Community partners to introduce special safeguards on the transport of live wild birds; and if he will make a statement.
§ Mr. MacleanThe then Secretary of State wrote to Commissioner Carlo Ripa di Meana on 18 February urging him to press the European Commission to expedite the proposed further measures for regulating the wild bird trade which are provided for in the EC Directive on the Welfare of Live Animals During Transport. We have not yet received a response from the Commissioner, but will keep up the pressure for early progress.
In the meantime, we are taking a number of other measures to improve transport conditions for live birds. We are pursuing with the International Air Transport Association the possibility of limiting the size of live bird 272W shipments, and are introducing a live animals checklist for all commercial shipments of live birds entering the United Kingdom. We remain very concerned about this issue and under the auspices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), we will continue to play a leading part in the adoption off international measures to provide for the suspension trade in species suffering unacceptably high mortality.