Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-12-11-Speech-2-096"
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"en.20011211.6.2-096"2
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".
For years, quality and public health in the production of food were secondary to the pursuit of ever lower production costs. A cheap food package had to keep the costs down for the public at large. Governments and private business shared the same view about this reduction in costs, which was achieved
by economies of scale, the use of artificial raw materials, intensification of the use of space, the import of animal feed from the Third World and an enormous number of redundancies.
For that purpose, slaughter waste and dioxin-poisoned grass were fed to animals, or animals were gathered in pens and lorries where disease was able to spread readily. After all, if one wanted better food, there was a separate distribution circuit for those in a higher income bracket. Only when it transpired that people can contract fatal illnesses from contaminated food, did an increasing number of people want to know what they were eating.
Once again, it is demonstrated that accidents need to happen first before the incentive is there to look for a solution to the problem. The solution does not lie in enhancing the European bureaucracy, or squabbles about the location and management of a new institution. Food safety can only be achieved if cost reduction and company profits are no longer paramount and if maximum openness is created in the field of complaints, minority verdicts, composition and safety measures.
I look forward to the revolutionary effect which Mr Staes envisages, but it remains to be seen whether it will materialise."@en1
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