Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-06-12-Speech-2-030"
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"en.20010612.3.2-030"2
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"Mr President, there are two key reasons for action in this field. Firstly, we are mutually dependent on each other for the safety of our food and drink. Food is a single market and food safety is a public health issue. Each country cannot send its food and farming police to sample the corn, chew the cattle and spot-check the vines in every other country. We rely on common standards upheld by consistent levels of inspection, assessment and enforcement.
Secondly, the public has lost confidence in the old national and European food safety systems; after the scandals and scares about olive oil, wine, mineral water, beef, eggs, poultry, milk, e-coli, listeria, salmonella, dioxins, hormones and GM foods – and the list goes on. The public wants to be reassured that the long road from seed or stable to market, supermarket, processing plant, oven, fridge and table is as safe as can reasonably be expected. They want safety assessment that is neither conducted behind the closed doors of the Commission nor tainted by producer or pressure group interest.
So just as when my report, at the White Paper stage, demanded a system based on science and focused on safety, again we say right across this House: keep the food safety authority slim, transparent, independent and dedicated to assessment of food safety risk and to recommendations as to what action, if any, should be taken. Do not roam down the lanes of healthy eating or comparative diets, however important in health promotion work such routes may be. Keep the word safety in the title of the authority to give a clear signal as to its purpose and methodology. Be, and be seen to be, independent of any one Member State and of the Commission, so do not have a board that allows each country to have a place on it. Keep the number to 12. Do not place the EFSA in any building or venue that has close connections with the institutions of the European Union. Appoint the director of the board after open competition and a parliamentary hearing. Account to Parliament annually for the stewardship of the remit. Publish without delay the conclusions and any minority conclusions of the board on any assessed risk, and hold meetings of the board in public. Attach the food safety bodies of Member States to the authority through an advisory committee comprising the national directors of such bodies.
I commend this report and I commend the rapporteur for a job well done, not least because of the inter-party and inter-country cooperation and discussion throughout. As a result the amendments in committee, which will in due course be largely subsumed in composite form, can nearly all be supported. To the Commission and the Council I would say: note the strength of unity in this Parliament on these key issues; cooperate with us in partnership and the beneficiaries will be the European consumers in every Member State."@en1
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