Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-23-Speech-1-098"
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"en.20020923.8.1-098"2
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"Mr President, firstly I would like to thank Mrs Paulsen for the inclusive approach she has given all the other groups during first and second reading and secondly congratulate her on the way she represented Parliament during conciliation, particularly when dealing with some of our friends in the German Green Group, a difficult task at the best of times as I am sure Chancellor Schroeder has found out and will continue to find out.
The European Union produces millions of tonnes of animal by-products and these are separated into three categories according to the risk to humans or animals. Category one, which contains specified risk material, was implicated in the spread of BSE. I am pleased that we also included in category one waste from airlines which may have come from countries that do not have the same standards as we do, although I am sure some people would say that some of the airline food would not be considered fit for human consumption anyway. There is category three, which is fit for human consumption, including catering waste, and category two, which is all the rest.
The big issue at conciliation was that of catering waste and there we had two national problems. In the UK catering waste is banned. It was implicated in the start of the foot-and-mouth epidemic in the north-east of England and also in the inquiry into the Classical Swine Fever outbreak in East Anglia, which suggested that the cause might have been a discarded ham sandwich thrown into a field of outdoor pigs. But historically in the UK, we carried out our processing of catering waste on farms – so-called pigswill. This was very hard to control and it is not surprising that there were breakdowns in the way that was done.
In some ways I wish that we had gone down the same route as the Germans and the Austrians which was not to process this material on farm, but to put in state-of-the-art multi-million pound installations which were run with typical German efficiency. Some of those are brand new and it would be unfair to shut them down at very short notice, particularly when one considers the alternatives as to where this waste would have to go. Maybe it would go into landfill, as much of the catering waste in the UK does, and that would be subject to rodents or seagulls taking part away and distributing it around the countryside. A second possible way of getting rid of it would be using incineration, which is both costly and damaging to the environment. It is very good that we negotiated this transitional period to 1 November 2006.
I said that in the UK we do not have pigswill. We do, however, recycle waste oil produced from such establishments as fish and chip shops, that monument to the culinary art, but also from other catering establishments and private homes that produce waste cooking oil. In the UK this was a thriving cottage industry. Every week a 25 litre drum was taken away and the chef was given GBP 5, part of the black economy. This was taken away to be processed into animal feed. However, when doubts were expressed about the continued use of this, the collectors started to charge a fee and at that point the chefs made alternative arrangements. That meant it went down the drain. That has resulted in blocked sewers and other environmental problems as congealed fats and oils interfere with the infrastructure below our streets taking away the waste water.
It is important that the UK gets an extension to give it time to review the situation, to evaluate the risks of the continued use of cooking oil, although personally I think they are insignificant, and to put in place systems for alternative uses such as biodiesel."@en1
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