Ethically Produced Food (Hansard, 12 May 2000)

§ Clare Short

The Government support ethical approaches to business and trade, which have an important part to play in promoting sustainable development and in bringing benefits to poor people in developing countries. We take account of animal welfare standards, employment practices and consequences for the environment.

My Department has developed detailed guidelines on the use of animals for any purpose, agricultural or otherwise. These guidelines govern animal welfare standards in all our programmes and projects. They reflect the broad guiding principles that use must be humane and that harms of a certain degree or kind ought under no circumstances to be inflicted on an animal. A copy of these guidelines is being placed in the Library of the House.

We encourage British retailers to examine their global supply chains to ensure they comply with the Core Labour Standards, as set internationally by the ILO within the Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights to Work, or can be bettered by voluntary codes of conduct such as SA 8000 or the base code of the Ethical Trading Initiative, which is supported by my Department.

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We also Promote better environmental management as a contribution to eliminating poverty. Environmental considerations are integrated throughout our programmes. All projects are screened at the design stage and monitored during implementation for their impact on the environment. My Department supports work to develop and implement a wide array of technologies and approaches that mitigate the impact of food production on the environment in developing countries. We also support efforts to encourage the private sector in developing countries to integrate environmental concerns into decision making by assistance to industry organisations, promotion of industry codes of conduct and environmental auditing standards.