Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-16-Speech-2-136"
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"en.20000516.6.2-136"2
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"Mr President, Mrs Roth-Behrendt’s report seeks to strengthen consumer protection measures but also to extend Parliament’s scope of action, by ensuring that all issues crucial to the prevention of TSEs are included in the regulatory instrument, not just in the annexes which are not covered by the codecision procedure.
This twofold concern seems to be particularly justified today, as French experience shows. The fact is that considering the range of measures already undertaken, such as the ban on animal-protein meal for bovine animals, the incidence of mad cow disease in France should have started to decline, but this is not the case, and in fact the number of cases is on the increase. It is this tendency which presents a problem right now, much more than the scale of the epidemic in quantitative terms. The truth is, at the present time, there is quite simply no adequate explanation for it, hence the debate which has been initiated on the possible existence of alternative disease transmission routes of which we are, as yet, unaware. Medical and scientific uncertainty still prevails.
In these circumstances, the precautionary principle must be adopted to the full. All possible resources must be used in order to assess the BSE situation in the various countries, particularly including the development and systematic use of fast screening tests. The development of BSE in France raises issues that are not purely medical in the narrowest sense. This is nothing new. From the very beginning, it has not been possible to give any explanation for the emergence of this disease and its transmission to human beings, and its spread internationally, without taking the key socio-economic factors into account: contemporary trends in the agro-industry, the subordination of producers and consumers to the dominating rationale of capitalistic profit.
Still today, the way in which the agro-industry is organised, and the fact that it is infiltrated by international mafia-like networks, make the fight to eradicate BSE and TSEs even more difficult.
No public health policy should ignore these factors. They are, however, discussed only on rare occasions and in little detail by the European institutions, including Parliament. Basically, BSE is one of those medical matters which, in practical and terribly human terms, bears witness to the acute nature of the choices that society makes, and that is yet another reason why preventing TSEs is a political matter to which Parliament’s responsibility is truly committed."@en1
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