Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-02-10-Speech-2-018"
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"en.20040210.1.2-018"2
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"Mr President, I too should like to thank the Commissioner for his explanation, but there is a Dutch proverb that says:
wherever an ass falls, there he will never fall again, or, in other words, ‘once bitten, twice shy’. It is certainly not my intention to draw a comparison between our Commissioner and that animal, but it is absolutely true that the Commission is often late in responding to certain epidemics of animal diseases. We saw this in the case of FMD and we are witnessing it again now. The Commissioner visited Thailand in early January and stated there, during his visit, that he was pleased about how the problem was being dealt with and that there was certainly no risk of avian influenza. Meanwhile, one month on, we are in the middle of a worldwide crisis. We in the CDA delegation in this House demand from the Commissioner that the line of approach similar to the one we have in the Netherlands, the so-called Veerman approach, should be extended Europe-wide: a ban on the imports of all poultry, so including cooked meat, from South-East Asia, a ban on the imports of ornamental birds, tighter control on flights from Asia and disinfectant mats on all international airports with direct or indirect connections to Asia. That is at the moment the only way of warding off this crisis.
In addition, I should like the Commissioner to shed light on the rumour that FMD has broken out in 26 towns in Vietnam. We can now fight the problem in good time and, if that is the case, we can ensure that, this time round, adequate measures are taken and we should not wait until the disaster has spread in South-East Asia again before we take action. We are in favour of supporting the Asian countries in the fight against avian influenza, but we in Europe should not be injecting funds into this while a number of countries ride roughshod over the quarantine measures.
Finally, the Commission should start a worldwide debate on the fight against animal diseases. Similarly, preventive vaccination should gradually become a subject of discussion worldwide, from the point of view of both public and animal health."@en1
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