When the Select Committee on Agriculture was appointed at the beginning of this Parliament, it could not have foreseen that it would be catapulted into the public eye by the subject matter of the inquiry on which it reported in the middle of the Salmonella Crisis just before Christmas, caused by the unclarified statement of a former junior Health Minister.

'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good, and I am satisfied that after all the public discussion since the Salmonella Crisis erupted poultry meals will no longer be included in layers' rations.

The House will recall that the Government's initial response to the Salmonella Crisis six months ago was to curtail research into salmonella at the Institute of Food Research in Bristol.

Let me also remind the hon. Gentleman that, at the height of the Salmonella Crisis, not a single country declined to accept eggs exported from the United Kingdom.

We have no justification under EC law to slap a ban on all imported eggs, just as other countries did not slap a ban on our eggs when the Salmonella Crisis was at its height.

During the Salmonella Crisis, consumer confidence completely collapsed.

He rightly said that we had commented on the fact that there had been a substantial improvement on the Government's handling of the Salmonella Crisis.

When the Government react against a body of relatively untested evidence, they create the kind of hysteria that surrounded the Salmonella Crisis and that we are seeing again in the BSE crisis.

75 million head of poultry in recent years as the result of the Salmonella Crisis.