Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-04-Speech-3-022"
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"en.20001004.3.3-022"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we should bear in mind the fact that one of the new features in the White Paper on food safety was the ‘farm to table’ idea, which made farmers directly responsible for the quality and the safety of the animal and vegetable raw materials that they produce. Almost a year after the publication of this paper and following many food crises, many of them linked directly to animal nutrition, Mrs Paulsen’s report is the first investigation of the role of animal nutrition in food safety. This is something we must all welcome.
One of the strong points of the proposal is the principle of non-dilution, which prohibits using healthy feedingstuffs to dilute a batch of animal feedingstuffs contaminated by, for example, dioxins. This is the position Mrs Paulsen, from the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, has adopted. This was also my position as draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Agriculture. The amendments proposed by members of the Group of the European People’s Party, Mrs Klass, Mrs Jeggle and Mr Sturdy, have made it possible to reintroduce dilution in the proposal adopted by the Committee on Agriculture. As I personally am not prepared to sacrifice food safety on the altar of the agri-food lobbies, I have withdrawn my name from the report.
Try as I might, ladies and gentlemen, I cannot understand the Group of the European People’s Party which, despite the successive crises, involving Belgian chickens contaminated by dioxins, French sewage sludge in animal feed or Dutch sump oils in cooking oil, wishes to continue to poison European consumers to some extent. Their idea is that we should not have to destroy a batch of products just because it is contaminated with dioxins! It would be much better to add healthy products until an acceptable level of pollution is reached.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Group of the European People’s Party, now that we have the White Paper, the precautionary principle and the principle of food safety, the only acceptable level of pollution in feedingstuffs for animals that will end up on our plate is the zero level measureable today. This is because dioxins are products that build up in the body. If we were to continue to allow dilution, this dioxin present in animal feedingstuffs would first build up in the animal, and then, to an even greater degree, this toxic product would gradually accumulate throughout the consumer’s body.
We must therefore join Mrs Paulsen and the Commission and adopt the principle of non-dilution in order to make animal nutrition safe and to effectively protect European consumers.
With regard to inspections, the Commission’s proposal for a directive on inspections in the field of animal nutrition stems from the report by Mr Staes. This reiterates and specifies the factors that are essential if we are to overcome the kind of aberration seen in the dioxin crisis in the summer of 1999. This report seeks to prevent poor coordination between national and European institutions. As draftsman of the opinion, I approve of the main amendments proposed by the Commission, such as the establishment of national contingency operational plans, giving the Commission the option to adopt interim protection measures, the obligation on Member States to inform the Commission as soon as contamination or serious risk thereof is detected, and the creation of a legal basis in this field.
It should be emphasised that inspections must take place on three levels in order to enable an emergency system to be established. The first level of inspection is the responsibility of the animal nutrition producing companies themselves as well as the farmers, who ought to be the most directly concerned with ensuring the quality and safety of the products that they use. The second level, of course, involves the Member States, who are responsible for carrying out inspections of food safety. The third level, which is the subject of this amendment, establishes the Commission as the supreme guardian of food safety, authorising it to intervene in emergencies, without necessarily consulting Member States, and to adopt any interim measures necessitated by the emergency.
This is all well and good, but Parliament must nevertheless identify its new role in this process. A slot must therefore be provided, at least at the end of the process, for the Commission to inform Parliament of the decisions that it has taken. What will the role of the European food agency provided for in the White Paper be, once it is up and running? We must ensure, on the other hand, that this process does not cause the Member States, businesses or producers to shirk their responsibilities."@en1
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