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Food

Volume 488: debated on Friday 6 March 2009

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what estimate he has made of the percentage of (a) meat, (b) eggs, (c) bread, (d) wheat, (e) fruit, (f) vegetables and (g) milk consumed which was produced domestically in each year since 1997. (257436)

Estimates of the percentage of meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables and milk consumed and which were produced domestically are provided in table 1. These figures are based on volumes of production and trade.

This information is not available for bread production. However data on the tonnage of wheat grain used for milling and the proportion of wheat grain that is home grown is collected and is shown in table 2. This is also based on volumes but is for the crop year rather than calendar year. The grain will be milled into flour for a range of purposes including bread, biscuits and cakes. It is not possible to provide information that distinguishes home grown wheat grain milled for bread flour.

Table 1: Estimate of the percentage consumed from domestic production for various commodities

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Meat

75

76

74

72

72

69

67

65

66

67

65

Liquid drinking milk

98

97

98

98

99

99

99

99

99

99

99

Eggs

92

94

93

89

88

85

82

83

85

81

77

Wheat

91

90

91

92

88

91

91

94

91

92

90

Fruit

8

7

9

8

8

7

6

6

7

6

7

Vegetables

63

69

69

69

65

61

60

59

57

57

55

Table 2: Estimate for the percentage of home grown wheat grain milled into flour for bread, cake, biscuit and other uses

Percentage

1996-97

87

1997-98

81

1998-99

82

1999-2000

83

2000-01

84

2001-02

83

2002-03

84

2003-04

86

2004-05

83

2005-06

84

2006-07

85

2007-08

79