Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-12-Speech-2-319"
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"en.20020312.13.2-319"2
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"Mr President, could I first of all thank Mrs Paulsen for the constructive way in which she has conducted the dialogue between the groups to come up with some compromise amendments? I am pleased that my group has been able to sign all the compromise amendments, with the exception of Compromise Amendment No 25. We very much support the ban on the use of catering waste in animal feed, not least because the likely cause of the foot and mouth disease outbreak in the United Kingdom was the use of pigswill as feed. I am also pleased to see that catering waste from abroad, such as may come from aeroplanes landing in our country, has been upgraded to category 1.
However, two problems emerge from this situation. The first is the use of used cooking oil in the United Kingdom as animal feed. Unfortunately, we will not be able to hide this oil behind the piles of fridges currently found in my own country and I am afraid that much of this oil will find its way into the drains of the country, causing environmental damage and also, I suggest, public health problems as it congeals and solidifies in the sewers of our major cities.
We also have a problem in Germany, where there are centralised plants for treating catering waste, unlike the on-farm situation in the UK, which was not very satisfactory. Many of these installations are brand new and run according to the highest standards with typical German efficiency. We should recognise the situation in Germany and Austria and allow an extension on the use of some of these brand new plants. That is why I am pleased to support Amendment No 10, which was proposed in committee by Mr Graefe zu Baringdorf and calls for the Commission to come up with a legislative proposal by June 2002 requiring Member States to supply proof that these plants can operate safely.
Compromise Amendment No 25 contradicts this because it calls for a four-year extension on the use of these plants. If, as I have been advised, the authors of the original amendment were to propose an oral amendment stating that this new legislative proposal could come forward in four years' time, then this would avoid such a contradiction. That would be a good way forward and my group would be prepared to support such a move.
On the issue of sludge, could I ask the Commissioner to clarify the situation? We have many slaughterhouses and meat processing plants that discharge effluent into domestic sewage systems in our major towns. Although this process involves some initial filtration, there is no way that one could describe this discharge as sterile: it contains pathogens of all sorts. Determining that the sludge from the sewage treatment plants in these large cities had to be incinerated under this directive would place unacceptable costs on slaughterhouses. The European Union has already been responsible for the closure of many slaughterhouses and, in fact, in many cases, there would be no space for separate sewage treatment facilities. Therefore, could I ask the Commissioner to make it quite clear on the record that the primary filtration products of these plants would be covered, but that the sludge from sewage treatment would not have to be incinerated and could be spread on the land as before?"@en1
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