Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-07-22-Speech-4-031"
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"en.19990722.2.4-031"2
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"(ES) Mr President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, Mr Commissioner, in recent years, Europe has been plunged into two significant health crises caused by food; firstly, BSE in the United Kingdom and, subsequently, the dioxin case in Belgium.
This should give us cause for reflection. But rather than just reflecting, we should take urgent and effective steps. The effects of these crises have been collective panic amongst consumers, some unfortunate cases of people affected, and irreparable and significant financial losses in the agricultural and food industries. Furthermore, they have caused distrust amongst consumers, damaged the reputation of the European agricultural and food industries amongst third countries and caused headaches for the governments of the Member countries. I can confirm this as a former head of food policy in Spain.
I want to highlight the fact that this serious health crisis is being fought with instruments which were designed for other purposes connected to the Common Agricultural Policy, such as the Standing Veterinary Committee which was intended to monitor animal health. Europe should have a professional Scientific Committee which guarantees food safety, including animal feedingstuffs which are another link in the food chain. It should have control mechanisms which allow for prevention rather than
stop-gap solutions and must have in place mechanisms to penalise Member countries which put public health at risk by deliberately obscuring causes of risk for a certain length of time.
Let us bear in mind that the necessary liberalisation of the markets and the opening up to third countries is exposing agriculture and cattle farming to difficult levels of competition and if effective preventative measures are not taken, the race to lower production costs will sooner or later bring about another similar case. Legislation is important as well as ecologically friendly agriculture, but it is not enough. We must act through effective mechanisms.
Finally, I would like to draw attention to the Commission"s chaotic information policy. In the case of dioxin, 15 days passed between the communication of the Standing Veterinary Committee and the official alert, while Commissioner Bonino simply announced that she did not drink Belgian milk. All of this was conveniently manipulated by the media."@en1
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"Ayuso González (PPE)"1
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