Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire MP Simon Hart has backed the livestock farming industry's plans to become greener – but says it can't be achieved with yet more red tape and regulation.

Speaking in a Private Member's Bill debate on Sustainable Livestock, Mr Hart said that making laws banning the use of feed grown in South America would not be fair on Welsh livestock producers, especially if it made them less competitive in Europe.

"Farmers, particularly those in my area and members of the Farmers Union of Wales, of the National Farmers Union Cymru and of the Country Land and Business Association, have been at the vanguard of sustainable land use and food production for longer than it has been fashionable to talk about those issues," he told the House of Commons, "and they do not often get the praise they deserve for their fantastic work in producing good quality food and maintaining the landscape as we expect to find it when we visit the countryside."

Pointing out that almost none of the thousands of livestock farmers in his constituency had asked him to back the Bill, he said that he feared that new legislation would leave our farmers at a disadvantage.

"Farmers simply want a chance to compete on a level playing field not only with other farmers across Europe and the world but with other industries in the UK.

"This is not about special pleading, but about their pleading to be treated in a similar manner to everybody else. The Bill contributes to a suspicion that individual Members of Parliament want to do things to agriculture rather than for it."

Mr Hart supported the sentiment behind the Private Member's Bill but said that legislation is the wrong way to go about achieving its aims. He is backing Government plans to increase sustainability by introducing clearer food labelling so that consumers will know what food has been born and bred in the UK and increasing the eco credentials of food served in schools and hospitals.

He also pointed out that for farmers to stay in business, and therefore looking after the countryside, they had to be profitable.

"Unless there is profit in farming, and unless there is the sort of profit that enables farmers to invest long term as opposed to short term, then there will be no sustainability of any sort—no environmental sustainability, no social sustainability and no economic sustainability."