Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-02-Speech-2-154"
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"en.20020702.7.2-154"2
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"Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, tomorrow's vote in this House will be a test of whether we want to create more consumer transparency or whether we prefer to defer to industry's interests and keep palming consumers off with genetically modified food on the quiet. To fail to adopt comprehensive labelling and, as a result, more detailed traceability, would be a declaration of consumer policy bankruptcy on the part of Parliament and subservience to the interests of genetic engineering. To allow traceability and transparency to fail would be to trample consumers' rights underfoot, which is why I call on the PPE-DE group in particular to relinquish its blocking stance, to take the consumers’ side at long last and to stop treating them like children.
It is totally unacceptable for cold-pressed oil or tomatoes to be labelled, because the proof is there, while as soon as the same oil is heated or as soon as the same tomatoes are made into ketchup, they need no longer be labelled. We need comprehensive labelling because consumers have a right to know what they are eating. The market – i.e. consumers – should be allowed to decide. We really have to look on them as responsible adults and we must not, under any circumstances, treat them like children. We have known – since the BSE scandal at least – that consumers want to know what animals are being fed and how.
Naturally we are categorically opposed to a threshold for unlicensed genetically modified food, because that would really push the Commission's objective of greater food safety
. Only expressly licensed products should be marketed. Anything else would be totally unacceptable and would turn food legislation on its head. Even the 1% value for licensed products would appear to be much too high and far too arbitrary for our liking. It would mean that an average shipload of non-genetically engineered soya beans could still contain over 3 000 tonnes of genetically engineered beans. The Commission must submit more safety measures to prevent contamination because what we need is more labelling and more consumer safety."@en1
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