Poultry sector growth plan risks UK national security, campaigners warn

Government’s food security push is said to rely on animal feed imports with vulnerability to supply chain shocks

The government’s planned poultry sector growth plan is a risk to national security, campaigners have warned.

Earlier this month, the environment secretary, Emma Reynolds , told the Groundswell agriculture festival that the key to improving food security was consuming more homegrown produce, and said this was why the government had set up the Farming and Food Partnership Board, whose members include industry leaders such as the president of the National Farmers’ Union and the chief executive of the Food & Drink Federation.

Reynolds said: “I would like to see us use different levers of the state and use the board to really boost the level of food production in the UK.”

In a parliamentary committee hearing earlier this month, the environment secretary said one of the biggest barriers to growth in the poultry sector was planning constraints. The Guardian has previously revealed that ministers were rewriting planning rules to make it easier to build intensive livestock farms despite concerns about water pollution, air quality and local opposition.

But this focus on growth in the poultry sector to tackle food security has met with strong criticism. Ruth Westcott, a campaign manager at Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, said the plan to produce more UK poultry was a risk to UK food security, not a solution.

“Intensive poultry farming is highly resource-intensive, polluting and inefficient, so it can never be a solution to food security,” Westcott said.

Sustain and the campaign group Communities Against Factory Farming (CAFF) are calling on the government to axe its poultry growth plan and focus on homegrown sources of protein such as pulses, legumes, nuts and beans.

“The government’s own national security assessment warns that ‘animal farming at current levels is unsustainable without imports – soy from South America makes up 18% of produced animal feed’,” said Maya Pardo, the campaign lead at CAFF. “Besides destroying the Amazon rainforest to feed factory-farmed chickens, heavy reliance on imports of animal feed also leaves us vulnerable to supply chain shocks and ecosystem collapse, which is a national security issue.”

Concerns about the UK’s food security have been expressed across the board. Last month the government’s farming roadmap set out its long-term vision for the farming sector over the next 25 years, including a vital focus on food security, warning geopolitical instability, the climate crisis, environmental degradation and supply chain disruptions were already affecting the UK’s food security. It warned this could increase the risk of “severe food price shocks” and in some “extreme situations, lead to reduced availability of certain foods”.

The language echoes a recent report by the UK’s top national security officials, which warned that national security was under severe threat from the climate crisis and the looming collapse of vital natural ecosystems, with food shortages and economic potentially just years away.

Just this month, the Italian coffee company Lavazza warned that coffee prices would remain high for years to come due to geopolitical tensions and the climate crisis driving up costs.

Harriet Bell, the regenerative farming lead at Riverford, said the organic veg box company welcomed planning reform that helped farmers invest in reservoirs, renewable energy and polytunnels, but planning reform “must not become a free pass for developments that undermine healthy water systems, biodiversity or animal welfare”.

The government’s farming roadmap set out that nature-friendly farming systems can sustain or enhance food production while strengthening resilience and reducing fertiliser dependency. Bell said if ministers were serious about food security, the forthcoming organic action plan for England should play an “important role in turning that ambition into reality”.

“In the long-term, food production depends on healthy soils, healthy water systems and biodiversity every bit as much as it depends on increasing production,” she said.

Tim Benton, a professor of population ecology at the University of Leeds, said food security would soon become the “organising principle” for agricultural policy.

He said in a volatile world that was only getting more volatile, the government needed to move away from having a risk register that focused on pinpointing particular events and instead recognise: “We’re in a new world where events are happening all of the time and will continue all of the time.”