Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing compensation to businesses that can demonstrate that they have (a) been unable to trade as normal and (b) had their trading activities severely limited as a result of avian influenza restrictions.

We are aware that the current unprecedented outbreak of Avian Influenza (AI) has created challenges for poultry and egg producers. We are working with the industry to support continued business activities.

In October 2022 we announced new support for the poultry industry to assist farmers and producers with the impacts of AI. This includes a change to the existing AI compensation scheme allowing us to provide swifter payments to help stem any cash flow pressures and give earlier certainty about entitlement to compensation. Any other compensation available to producers would come from the payout of private AI insurance policies and we are working with the industry to support continued access to insurance for those that require it.

We have also introduced market support measures to assist businesses impacted by AI. These included:

• Allowing seasonal poultry producers to slaughter birds, freeze them and then sell them as defrosted products during the period 28 November to 31 December 2022.
• Concessions to the labelling of free-range eggs from poultry housed under AI mandatory housing measures for longer than the 16-week period for which an automatic derogation applies.

Following a reduction in the risk levels, the lifting of the Avian Influenza Prevention Zone mandatory housing measures on the 18 April 2023 will come as welcome news to producers. This means that from 18 April, eggs laid by birds with access to outside range areas can return to being marketed as ‘free range’ eggs.

We continue to monitor the impacts of Avian Influenza on the poultry and egg sectors.