Veal campaigners to confront Waldegrave

Compassion group shows a new film of calves' ordeal as Major backs mini ster in Commons. Ian MacKinnon reports

William Waldegrave, the Minister of Agriculture, under fire for allowing his calves to go for veal production, will come face to face with some of his sternest critics tomorrow. Leading figures in the pressure group Compassion in World Farming wi ll stepup their demands that he clamp down on the trade as well as ending the involvement of his own Somerset farm.

The Prime Minister yesterday said that the Government would like to see less trade in live animals, but defended Mr Waldegrave, pointing out that his farm was run by Lord Carter, a Labour peer and agriculture spokesman. To raucous Tory cheers at Prime Minister's Question Time, John Major said: "His farm is managed on a day-to-day basis by a farm management company headed by a Labour frontbench spokesman in the House of Lords."

Compassion in World Farming yesterday showed new film of the suffering of calves flown to France, and penned and tethered in veal crates after many hours cooped up in lorries.

The group's latest initiative was backed by Eric Martlew, Labour MP for Carlisle, whose Private Member's Bill to ban the export of live calves for veal will come up for Second Reading on 3 February. Activists hope the Government may be persuaded to support the Bill, which they see as the first step towards a ban on all shipments of live animals from Britain. It would prevent both farmers and exporters selling or shipping calves to the Continent for rearing in crates to produce white veal.

"It is a cruel trade and we need to stop it," Mr Martlew said yesterday. "Most of the people of Britain are against it, and so there must be a natural majority in Parliament against it.

"If it is cruel to put calves in crates in Britain, where it was banned five years ago, then it must be cruel to send them to veal crates on the Continent."

Joyce D'Silva, Compassion's director, will urge upon Mr Waldegrave other improvements in conditions for livestock. The group says journeys by animals for slaughter and fattening should be limited to eight hours, a measure the minister would be able to introduce under an EU directive of 1991.

Compassion will also demand that the courts be given power to suspend trading by livestock shipment companies convicted of animal welfare offences. Large firms such as Albert Hall Farms, of Yorkshire, the country's biggest exporter of calves, which was fined £12,000 last week, need stern measures, said Ms D'Silva. "Sums like that are only small change to these companies. The only thing that will make them sit up and come to their senses is a suspension."

The group will ask Mr Waldegrave to try to persuade other EU countries to change the status of livestock under the Treaty of Rome, recognising them as beings with feelings rather than simply commodities as now.

Inside Parliament, page 8