Mr Alistair Carmichael

Mr Alistair Carmichael

Liberal Democrat — Orkney and Shetland

Speaking in the House of Commons on 11 September 2025

Debate

Biosecurity at the Border: Britain’s Illegal Meat Crisis

Contribution

Even as things currently stand, we have a mental health crisis in the farming industry. We know from our own personal community experience from 2001 that that was a moment of genuinely acute mental health crisis from which many people have not yet recovered. The truth of the matter is that one of the biggest challenges facing the livestock sector is maintaining a critical mass of livestock numbers. If we were to go through the same sort of cull that we went through in 2001, starting from where we are today, I think we would risk losing that critical mass, and that could have a catastrophic impact on farmers right across the country.

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