Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-131"
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"en.20000516.6.2-131"2
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"Mr President, Mrs Roth-Behrendt, Mr Böge, Commissioner, we have before us a proposal for a regulation on the prevention of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, which is to say degeneration of the brain in bovine animals, sheep, primates, antelope, cats and even humans, since there have been 53 cases of atypical Creutzfeldt-Jakob in Great Britain, all fatal.
So now we are going to adopt regulations to prevent an epidemic that we have known about since 1986, i.e. for fourteen years. It is rather late in the day to react, but even so over the last fourteen years we have done a great deal. Last month, for example, we decided to stick labels on meat to warn consumers. The Commission told us that it was impossible to enforce such labelling before 2002, sixteen years after the outbreak of the disease, but we have done something all the same. We have had discussions with Mr Delors, with Mr Santer, with Mr Prodi, with Mr McSharry, the Commissioner responsible for agriculture, then Mr Steichen, and Mr Fischler. We have set up a committee of inquiry chaired by our fellow Member, Mr Böge, a temporary monitoring committee; we have even tabled a motion of censure, against Mr Böge’s wishes. We have heard expert opinions from Mr Dirringer, the German virologist, Mr Picoud, Mr Dormont, Scottish specialists, our Portuguese fellow Member, Garcia, was a specialist. We have had debates, topical and urgent questions on the embargo, etc.
After fourteen years of discussion, there are few survivors of this war of nigh on twenty years – Mr Graefe zu Baringdorf, Mr Cunha, Mr Böge, and myself. Mr Happart left us and Mr Pagel died. So I think it would be useful for the more recent Members, in the end, if I gave a sort of debriefing on the subject, quite apart from the problems with the legal basis under Article 100 A or BSE monitoring problems.
The starting point for this business was the 1984 milk quotas. To improve their milk reference, our British friends drove their cows like some sort of engines, overfeeding them, and, in order to save on the cost of fodder, they fed their cows on meal made from carcasses. Then, again, to save fuel oil when manufacturing meal, they reduced the cooking temperature, thereby enabling the pathogen to survive. BSE is the tragic product of the race for profits and the British farm model.
The disease has been identified since 1986, but nothing much was done until 1996. Why not? The public could not be thrown into a panic because the Maastricht Treaty had to be sold to them. So the press, the Commission and the European Parliament all knew about it, but did not say a word. So when, in March 1996, the British, via the British Ministers for Agriculture and Health, admitted that the disease could be transmitted to human beings, the necessary measures were not taken. Why? Because this time the reason the public could not be thrown into a panic was no longer to sell the Maastricht Treaty but the Treaty of Amsterdam. So, met first with silence and then with lies, the epidemic spread and we all know what the outcome of that was.
In the first place, BSE has not been eradicated in Great Britain, and will not be eradicated. Secondly, the belated ban on meal did not serve to eradicate contamination. Thirdly, either contamination crossed over to the meal fed to poultry, or there is a third transmission route. In addition to maternal contamination, there may be transmission via the fields, the grazing land, the grass, and there may be badlands, as in the case of ovine scrapie, where the prion would be encysted and would return as soon as bovine animals were put to pasture there. Fourthly, Great Britain and the industrialists causing the contamination have not, as polluters, paid. It is innocent farmers, grain farmers, who are paying the price, in the same way that the farmers are paying for Kosovo.
All in all, then, the directive and the regulation are all well and good, but they are somewhat hypocritical. We all agree that we need regulations on prevention, we are all agreed on adopting the amendments from the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, to whom the matter should have been referred. We all agree that scientific measures are needed, methods to be used in abattoirs to remove the ilia, the ganglia, the duodena, the inguinal, medial, lateral, renal, prefemoral and cervical lymph nodes, but this is not the key issue. In the BSE crisis, at the moment of truth, when protective action had to be taken, it was taken by the national states. That is the main lesson to be learnt from the TSE business. Firstly, protection is always led by the states. Secondly, the precautionary principle means safeguarding nations. This is no obstacle to the construction of Europe but, like children making tree houses, it is just a game. That is what we are doing here, Mr President, all playing out together."@en1
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