Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-11-20-Speech-3-302"
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"en.20021120.9.3-302"2
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". – Mr President, I am pleased and impressed that the European Parliament has prepared its report on the Commission's proposal on additives for use in animal nutrition so swiftly. This underlines the importance that Parliament attaches to the sensitive issue of animal nutrition in relation to human and animal health.
At present, only four antibiotics are authorised for use in animal feed as growth promoters. The EU has already phased out the use in feedingstuffs of all antibiotics that are used in both human and veterinary medicine, in order to avoid cross-resistance.
The four antibiotics in question are not used for any human antibiotic drugs. The Commission announced its intention to phase out these remaining antibiotics in feedingstuffs in the White Paper on Food Safety. This reflected scientific advice that the use of antibiotics as growth promoters is undesirable for human and animal health, owing to concerns about increased resistance of diseases to treatment with antibiotics.
The Scientific Steering Committee has also recommended the progressive replacement of the remaining four antibiotics by non-antimicrobial alternative products. The Commission proposes to withdraw the authorisations for these four antibiotics on 1 January 2006.
With regard to coccidiostats – substances used to prevent coccidia infections – the proposal contains stricter rules for their authorisation and placing on the market. The reason for this is that hygiene precautions and improved husbandry practices are not sufficient to keep poultry free from such diseases. However, in order to ensure the safety of these substances, I propose that current authorisations be reviewed within four years of the entry into force of the regulation.
These are some of the major issues that Parliament has considered. I hope and expect that we will be able to reach constructive solutions.
I will address the various amendments proposed by Parliament at the end of this debate.
I would like in particular to thank and congratulate Mrs Keppelhoff-Wiechert for her hard work on this report.
This issue is also a high priority for the Danish Presidency of the Council. I hope, therefore, that we can make rapid progress to show the outside world how important the EU considers human and animal health issues to be.
This proposal represents a major streamlining of the current rules on safety evaluation and marketing authorisations for feed additives.
This overhaul is both timely and welcome. The current legislation has been revised over one hundred times. The new rules will be much simpler and clearer.
We will have a clear and transparent authorisation procedure. The European Food Safety Authority will be the first port of call and will be in charge of evaluating all feed additives.
In future, the validity of authorisations will be limited to ten years. The new system also includes an in-built review and re-evaluation process so as to allow new scientific information to be taken into account.
Companies will be required to demonstrate the positive effect on the animal and the absence of any risk to human or animal health or the environment when applying for authorisation or re-authorisation of a feed additive.
Wherever required for the sake of public health, the European Food Safety Authority will propose to the Commission maximum residue limits to be laid down in legislation."@en1
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