Food: Exports

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what estimate he has made of the amount of domestic (a) meat, (b) eggs, (c) bread, (d) wheat, (e) fruit, (f) vegetables, (g) milk and (h) total food production that was exported in each year since 1997. (264583)

[holding answer 19 March 2009]: Estimates of the volume of exports for meat, eggs, bread, wheat, fruit, vegetables and milk are shown in table 1.

Exports of food, animal feed and alcoholic drinks are shown in table 2. These are presented in £ million, in real terms at 2007 prices. All figures other than bread are published in “Agriculture in the United Kingdom”.

The figures shown may include re-exports of imported produce.

*Table 1: UK exports of various commodities*
Figures in thousand tonnes except milk in million litres and eggs in million dozens
	1997	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007
Meat	614	641	580	523	280	400	443	474	481	499	574
Liquid drinking milk	85	156	203	156	63	67	193	251	485	512	423
Eggs	26	27	12	15	10	16	16	13	13	18	17
Wheat	3,720	4,208	2,853	3,672	1,626	1,625	3,778	2,293	2,466	2,116	1,912
Fruit	72	69	74	60	74	70	79	106	121	178	148
Vegetables	280	77	91	99	103	113	103	93	88	83	88
Bread	61	61	63	69	85	72	58	69	63	65	86

*Table 2: UK exports of food, animal feed and alcoholic drinks in real terms at 2007 prices*
	£ million
1997	12,891
1998	11,664
1999	11,092
2000	10,557
2001	10,140
2002	10,453
2003	11,260
2004	10,736
2005	10,698
2006	10,955
2007	11,379

Volume 490: debated on Monday 30 March 2009