Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-03-Speech-2-160"
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"en.20010403.8.2-160"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner for Consumer Affairs, yes, I said ‘for Consumer Affairs’ and not ‘for Agriculture’, our current concern, the foot-and-mouth crisis, has arrived just in time. Foot-and-mouth disease has arrived just in time for eastward enlargement and for the WTO negotiations. First of all, it is in time for eastward enlargement, since we must, of course, cut our agricultural expenditure because the annual budgetary pie for agriculture will have to be cut into 21 slices instead of 15 and everyone’s piece will, therefore, be smaller unless the number of farmers is reduced.
And it has arrived just in time for the WTO negotiations, since we must make room in our marketplace for goods from the southern hemisphere, for goods from the Cairns Group as we already have for wine, fruit and vegetables – but there is also New Zealand and Australia, which, as if by chance, produce lamb. So, how can we now cut agricultural expenditure for Western Europe and make room in our marketplace for goods from the South? Quite simply by cutting our numbers of farmers and livestock. And how can we cut our numbers of farmers and livestock? Quite simply by making a drama of an everyday occurrence of foot-and-mouth disease, blowing it out of all proportion subjecting it to
type media treatment, turning it into a spectacle, with butchers, mass graves, diggers, bulldozers, cordons sanitaire, the armed forces and mountains of burning sheep, cattle and pigs.
For months now, the Food and Agriculture Organisation has been warning of foot-and-mouth disease prevalent in Anatolia, Korea, Japan, in South Africa itself and in Greece last year. The world is on red alert and yet the European Union does not flinch. Foot-and-mouth disease breaks out, and it breaks out, as luck would have it, in Great Britain, which has the most livestock in Europe. What we should do is vaccinate. So, what do we do? We do not vaccinate. And we do not vaccinate firstly because we have to come through this unscathed and vaccination would involve three million pigs, sheep and cows, secondly because this would cost EUR 100 million, and finally because we could no longer export anything even though we are not exporting anything at all. And so the disease spreads further.
And what is the outcome of all this? Farmers aged 55 and over, whose herds have been slaughtered, are forced into retirement. Farmers who suffer unavoidable financial problems due to a fall in sales go out of business. But then, although farmers leave farming, the budget savings that we need can be achieved. Although British herds are haemorrhaging, there is room in the marketplace for lamb from the southern hemisphere and then New Zealand and Australia will, as a result, agree to sign up at the WTO.
Eastward enlargement can go ahead, since, in terms of the budget, agricultural expenditure has been slashed.
In the wake of the BSE crisis, foot-and-mouth disease has given rise to a total of three miracles. The first miracle is that there are fewer budgetary obstacles standing in the path of eastward enlargement. The second miracle is that the Cairns Group is satisfied with the sacrifice of European livestock and is happy to sign up to the WTO. The third miracle is that we can also reform the CAP at the expense of our farmers, who are made out by the media to be poisoning cows and infecting sheep.
All of this happened by chance, of course. It was also by chance that Stephen Dorrell admitted in 1996 that BSE could be passed on to humans, at the exact time when there was the scandal of US hormone-treated beef. It is by chance that we have allowed the disease to spread. It is by chance that, for ten years, we have done nothing to combat BSE. It is by chance that the United States has a stranglehold over the world’s media. So, Mr President, you must appoint Mr Chance European Commissioner alongside Mr Pascal Lamy. Having given up on soya at the Blair House negotiations, he will be successful at the WTO negotiations and next on the list will be the farmers."@en1
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"Apocalypse Now"1
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