Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

Absolutely. In recent years, we have made a big effort to encourage agriculture Ministries throughout Europe, the European Parliament's agriculture committee and the agriculture Directorate General to get more involved in the climate debate. I am glad to say that is now happening. We are seeing much greater engagement by agriculture and food interests in the whole debate within Europe. It is certainly appropriate for this committee to engage in it too. I agree with what the Chairman said about the variable treatment of this issue in the media. We recently invited a range of people from the media into the Department for a briefing on climate change to try to get them to understand the facts. There is a great deal of misinformation out there, unfortunately. Some of this stuff is a bit complicated. I think those who came to the briefing were quite impressed by it. We will continue to try to get people in the media to understand the facts - I should not use the word "educate" - before they write articles about climate change. As the Chairman said, the Government has a clear position on hormone beef. It is completely opposed to any question of allowing imports of hormone beef. The Commission is pursuing that line. It is constantly reassuring us that it will hold that line. We will certainly be policing that very strongly in the negotiations on TTIP.