Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 1 February 2017.
Thank you. Simon Thomas raises a very important point. When I came into portfolio and saw that 89 per cent of our egg production was free-range I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have 100 per cent?’ But, clearly, out of a clear blue sky, this sort of thing drops on you. The free-range industry have already contacted me asking for a meeting; I’m very happy to meet with them. We know of the significant cost it would be in relation to their packaging et cetera, so it is very important that we do all we can to help them. It also shows, when you went into those precautionary measures, it was right to wait. Obviously, bird flu is over in Europe. We didn’t go too soon because of that 12-week period that we could only keep the birds in. As I say, we can’t keep them in-house forever; we need to look at it very carefully. But it is a very fluid situation and I will update Members as we go through the month of February.