Former Secretary of State, George Eustice MP, has proposed a Coronation fund of £10m to save Britain’s rarest native farm breeds from extinction. The proposal is being considered by ministers as part of plans to mark next month’s Coronation.
Speaking on 8.9 TV News, Mr Eustice said “In the year of the King’s Coronation, given that King Charles has spent a life time championing native breeds and rare breeds, there’s something quite powerful in setting up a scheme that’s in an area that’s dear to his heart – and this is the year to do it.”
King Charles has been a patron of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust for more than 30 years and has shown a strong personal interest in championing efforts to save endangered cattle, ponies, pigs and sheep being reared in Britain.
Mr Eustice said “As we’ve had more commercial livestock breeds we’ve been relying on an ever decreasing pool of genetic material to make the animal that’s used in commercial farming.
“Life itself on this planet depends on genetic diversity for its resilience, in nature, and in livestock as well. When you get a particular challenge, often the solution is there tucked away in a gene sitting somewhere in a rare breed or less commercial animal. It’s a very important resource, and if we neglect it we are damaging our ability to be resilient as an industry.”
Mr Eustice said “It’s always the case that you’ll perhaps get an problem with lameness that develops, or a disease challenge, or you may want an animal that’s more suitable for regenerative grazing – and actually you need to be able to reach back into the genetic resources that are held in all those native breeds; they are pools of genetic diversity.
“We need to recognise that some of these native breeds, because they have evolved on this island over hundreds or thousands of years, they actually do possess genes that are a distant memory of challenges that might have been encountered before that might be encountered again, and they offer the solution. For example, some native breeds of cattle have a slightly higher propensity to be able to resist bovine tuberculosis and there has been some interesting work about genetic selection for bovine animals that might have some natural resistance to TB. If we lose native breeds, then when they’re lost, they’re lost for good.”
Mr Eustice is pushing ministers to set aside £10 million for native and rare breed breeding programmes. The current Environment Secretary, Therese Coffey, is currently giving the plan serious consideration.
Britain has 235 native breeds of livestock, of which more than three-quarters are at risk of extinction. Many breeds faced being wiped out by the rise of intensive farming in the 1990s, before campaigners began to turn the situation around.