Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-11-Speech-2-290"
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"en.20000411.11.2-290"2
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"Mr President, the people who will be most shocked to learn of this evening’s debate must surely be European consumers. They will be astounded to learn that, so many years after the start of the BSE crisis, the European Union still does not have a reliable traceability system for beef. Quite clearly, though, consumer confidence must be restored, as a matter of urgency, by guaranteeing the consumer perfect traceability from the stable to the table, so that any potential risk to human health can be efficiently eliminated at an early stage.
Fortunately, the appropriate initiatives by the most enterprising Member States have compensated for the extraordinarily slow reactions of the Community apparatus. It is therefore all the more deplorable that they should have been deprived of this possibility by the Treaty of Amsterdam. I am thinking in particular of the compulsory labelling system which was drawn up in France together with livestock farmers and distributors, which has been in force since 1996. This system has proved very effective. It has made it possible to restore consumer confidence.
France’s legitimate wish not to lift the embargo on British beef prematurely, since Britain did not offer the same guarantees of traceability, was in order to maintain this restored level of confidence. France had simply forgotten that it no longer had the right to do this. What a decidedly strange Europe it is that penalises Member States which take the necessary initiatives and action to restore consumer confidence and protect citizens’ health!
If legal action can now only be taken at Community level, then let us at least act quickly and stop indefinitely postponing the implementation of the commitments made in 1997 with a view to providing the consumer with transparent and comprehensible information.
Compulsory labelling indicating the origin of goods must therefore be introduced as soon as possible, and it must certainly not be postponed until 1 January 2003, as the Commission proposes. We must not agree to any exemptions, again as the Commission proposes, for minced and cut meat, which would be tantamount to excluding 30% to 50% of beef, according to the country, from the need for mandatory labelling. Nor must we agree, as the Commission is once again proposing, to adopt an over-general EC-type generic designation of origin. Consumers want to be certain of the operators’ ability to monitor the origin of meat accurately. The Member State of origin must therefore be indicated. Furthermore, beef imported from third countries must be subject to the same labelling regulations as Community beef, and if it does not comply with European Union regulations on traceability, this must also be clearly indicated.
This, Mr President, is the intention of the amendments which Mrs Thomas-Moreau and I tabled on behalf of the UEN Group, which we are proposing to all our fellow Members who are keen to contribute to bringing about genuine traceability of beef."@en1
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