Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-123"
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"Mr President, our discussion today on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, transmissible diseases which include BSE or scrapie, is one of the many follow-up reports or one of the follow-up discussions to the final BSE report and I think that it is also of great interest to the visitors in the gallery. We have a report here before us which the Commission promised together with its final report on the 1997 BSE report at Parliament’s request. It has now presented it. We have drafted a report on it, although not as quickly as we would otherwise have done, due to the break last year. The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development and Mr Böge have drafted opinions on it. In other words, we have been able to keep the BSE team going well.
I should like to tell you briefly how I, as rapporteur for the committee responsible, the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, assess the proposal. The Commission’s proposal is a good one; like so much of what the Commission has presented on BSE and follow-up problems and has satisfied us in previous years, we are also satisfied with this proposal but, like most things, it still has room for improvement, Mr Byrne. I said that your proposal on BSE testing had room for improvement and I say so again here today. The involvement of the European Parliament certainly needs to be improved. We must ensure that the European Parliament can act in the codecision procedure as the real guarantor of consumer and health protection in the European Union. Only then will we have a high standard and only then will you be able to work in proper collaboration with us, because the Council of Ministers, the individual Agricultural Ministers have not exactly been at the vanguard of the movement over recent years, as we here in the House are only too aware.
It is also important, and here too another proposal needs improvement, for us to hold further discussions on the rapid BSE tests. You tabled a proposal after this TSE proposal which you then needed to adjust, but the proposal is still inadequate. If we are to be able to make a real appraisal of the BSE situation in the Member States, we must make it clear that fallen stock are also to be tested for human health safety in a screening process. So far you have presented no proposal on this.
What we also need, and we have tried to achieve this in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy and in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, is to strengthen the Member States’ obligation to inform the Commission and to give the Commission information and data on incidents in their countries, on BSE problems or on suspicious circumstances. Here too we need to take the Member States to task more. Here, too, I repeat: mistrust is always shown of the Member States, including my own, and rightly so.
Mr Böge rightly pointed out – as I am sure he will again in his presentation – that we need a Community definition of geographical areas. The definition here is clearly inadequate and the Commission must explain – and I call on you to do so Mr Byrne – how it intends to deal with derogations for cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other medicinal products. I am convinced of the need for the Commission to make proposals in order to close any loopholes in current legislation.
Allow me to make a few comments on the proposed amendments and then, thanks to the speaking time for my group, I shall still have time for a comment at the end of the debate. I agree with nearly all the proposed amendments, but there are some and here I would ask how you evaluate them, Mr Byrne. This applies in particular to proposed Amendment No 50, which includes cat food in the proposal tabled by Mr Böge, who I know takes a very careful approach to everything. But you have said that you have a problem with cat food. Please say something about the risk of infection from cats.
Mrs Attwooll and others have proposed a number of amendments, specifically Amendments Nos 53, 54 and 55. These proposed amendments limit the present proposal and do not represent any improvement, not even for the situation in the United Kingdom, which I would have understood. For example, no distinction is made between breeding and fattening; that is a completely inadequate proposal. I sympathise with the suggestion in the second part of proposed Amendment No 56 that certain materials should be removed if a Member State has a specific and efficient system, but I must also say unequivocally that, at the present stage of the discussion on special risk materials, it is a dangerous signal to Member States such as my own, which are very reticent.
Allow me to repeat quite clearly: the repercussions on the Member States have obviously been overestimated by some members in the House. In countries which have a good, operational system and a high level of protection, this regulation will not cause any deterioration. But in countries which do not, it would at long last force them to buckle down and give priority to safety and health protection. That is why I fail to understand much of the mistrust of many members, but perhaps we can clear that up in the debate.
Mr President, I shall have another three minutes at the end of the debate, which I shall use to comment on some of the interventions by the honourable Members."@en1
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