Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-11-15-Speech-3-190"
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"en.20001115.9.3-190"2
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"Madam President, Mr President-in-Office of the Council, the BSE crisis has turned into a case of collective paranoia. The justified mistrust of consumers threatens the entire beef sector and the spectre of ruin haunts our livestock producers and small artisanal enterprises.
By displaying courage and ambition, we can combine the health interests of Europeans and the economic interests of our producers, and thereby restore confidence. This will only be possible if there is no longer any doubt in the public mind, in other words, if screening is, as I would insist, systematic. Unless there is mandatory general testing, confidence will not be restored, for confidence cannot be restored by decree; it has to be earned.
These are the reasons why my group has signed the motion for a resolution which will be presented to this House tomorrow, which, I hope, will be adopted with, if not a unanimous vote, at least a very large majority, so that everybody can be made aware that this Parliament is in direct touch with the problems affecting European citizens.
This has come to pass because the incompetence of governments has been aggravated by our own inability to respond to the twofold challenge before us: the health challenge and the economic challenge. I will not detail the horrors that have been committed on all sides. I find the debate that is underway in this Chamber, which consists in finding out which institution out of the Council, the Commission or Parliament has done the most and which the least, rather unnecessary. The reality is something else. The facts stand, and they are appalling. We were aware of the dangers of animal meal, we were aware of the dangers of specified risk materials. The scientific authorities clearly stated that the development of the disease in cattle was not under control and they pinpointed the alarming growth in the numbers of animals affected.
I believe that the Commission has failed miserably. The labelling of beef that was agreed on, which is a minimum form of labelling and only came into force two and a half months ago, does not make it possible for the origin of animals to be adequately traced, and we were very slow to ban specified risk materials.
The management of the crisis has been terribly poor, and there were tragic shortcomings in our ability to anticipate the foreseeable consequences of the crisis. Where are the programmes to reduce the deficit of proteins in the European Union, to which reference was made a few moments ago? Where are the programmes to incinerate animal meal and animal waste and to implement obligatory testing throughout the European Union? The truth is that this is a problem affecting the European Union as a whole, not just a single country. The truth is that food quality has been sacrificed on the altar of productivity, the standardisation of lifestyles and flavourless products.
Consumers used to have doubts about quality; today they worry about their own health. Our citizens know – because we cannot lie to people with impunity – that the crisis is serious. They know that if we are discovering sick animals in France, it is because we are looking for them, as was said earlier. We need far-reaching measures to be adopted at a national and European level if we want to avoid economic bankruptcy and a major health scare. We need to adopt the proposals put forward by the President-in-Office of the European Council, especially those banning animal meal in feed in all sectors of animal production.
But we also need two additional, comprehensive plans, and I am calling for their immediate implementation, because any delay through hesitation would exacerbate the health and economic risks. The measures adopted by the French Government in this regard are, as I said, inadequate. Firstly, as others have said before me, we must have systematic screening of all cattle slaughtered for consumption by European citizens. For more than a year, the European authorities have been examining three screening tests, including the French test, which is deemed to be the most reliable and the most sensitive. This test can be developed on an industrial scale very quickly. It has to be done, without hesitation and without delay, and on a massive scale. Just now, I heard reference being made to random tests. Random tests are not going to restore consumer confidence, or producer confidence for that matter.
Public opinion must be fully informed of the characteristics of the test I am talking about. The French screening test for BSE was developed at the CEA (a public-sector research institute). In June it was assessed by Directorate General 24 of the European Commission, which is responsible for consumer protection, and, in July 1999, it was transferred to an industrial partner. This test was developed with a view to protecting the consumer, so that it could be extensively used in slaughterhouses, thus preventing animals dangerous to human health entering the food chain. The results of the European assessment, which were published in July 1999, suggest that it is 10 to 300 times more sensitive than the three other tests assessed at the same time.
A new study undertaken in September 2000 has been evaluated by the European Commission. It confirms the preceding results in terms of sensitivity. The sensitivity of this test guarantees that contaminated animals cannot possibly enter the food chain. The result of the examination can be obtained within 5 hours, and the test can be made widely available, as hundreds of millions of samples a year can be produced easily. Its immediate widespread use in the veterinary laboratories of the French
would simply require the allocation of sufficient human resources until it can be automated. The test exists, it is reliable, and it can be carried out on a massive scale. I hope I have convinced you that it needs to be done.
Secondly, Community farming needs to be reorganised to put our set-aside lands back into production so that we can grow soya, alfalfa and peas, which will give us the replacement proteins we are lacking and which will feed our animals much better than American GMOs. We sacrificed our soya, alfalfa and peas in the course of the COM negotiations in Marrakech. Well, the thing with poor agreements is that they should be challenged, especially when public health dictates this."@en1
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