MINISTER SIMON COVENEY will meet with an Agriculture Committee tomorrow to discuss the Animal Health and Welfare Bill 2012.

Chairman of Select Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Andrew Doyle TD, said the meeting would give them the opportunity to consider the Bill as it enters its third stage of five.

“The prosperity of the food industry, worth up to €10 billion annually, is directly related to the safety of the food we are producing,” Doyle said.

He said that animal health, animal welfare and farm profitability were fundamentally interlinked and “of equal importance”.

Doyle welcomed the opportunity to “carefully consider” the potential implications of the Bill.

The Animal Health and Welfare Bill 2012 has undergone debate in the Seanad and is now at Committee stage.

It aims to:

• Revise the law relating to the health and welfare of animals and their protection and identification
• Provide for the regulation of certain activities relating to animals
• Prevent cruelty to animals
• Make provision for the licensing of animal marts and for levies for the purposes of animal health and the control of animal diseases
• Repeal various enactments relating to animals
• Amend the Animal Remedies Act 1993 and to provide for related matters

Read more about the Animal Health and Welfare Bill 2012

Read: Anjelica Huston calls on Minister Simon Coveney to ban fur farming in Ireland>