Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-11-30-Speech-3-152"
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"en.20051130.14.3-152"2
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".
Mr President, I thank the rapporteur for what he said and I agree with him. I should also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the Commissioner on his openness with Parliament – that is a great attribute and very much appreciated by Members – as well as on his urgency and on the fact that he has not panicked. This has been a great attribute right the way through.
On a number of occasions he has asked Members to help him spread the word. I noticed that when he last visited Parliament, he asked MEPs to try to find out and spread the word in their Member States to gain awareness of what was happening. We are all happy to do this. Of course, we will need full information to continue to spread the word. The Health Council meets on 9 December 2005 and I hope this will make the situation clearer.
We also need to know what the situation is right across the board with Member States. I ask this because I understand that 21 Member States are already fully prepared and in a state of readiness. Could the Commissioner tell us which four Member States are not in that situation?
This is not a party political issue. We want the Commission and the governments to come out of this looking good: we do not want to be accused of stupid, irresponsible measures. It is a great opportunity. We have seen what happened in France and the Netherlands and the fact that people do not trust the European Union, Parliament and the Commission. If we get this right – and I think the Commission is getting it right, but we need more information – we will do a very good job for promoting the European Union.
This is about transparency and making sure that everyone understands it. At the moment, a number of half-truths seem to be circulating. For example, I hear a lot about the European migratory system – the birds that migrate into the European Union. I recently visited one of those sites in the United Kingdom. In fact, all the migratory birds in the United Kingdom come from the north, not from an area where avian flu is present. It is this kind of information that, in my opinion, people are getting slightly wrong.
The Commissioner mentioned the disease and I would like to ask him another question. Avian flu – to the best of my knowledge – is an infection of the gut, not of the respiratory tract. I believe that is correct and I shall be interested to hear what the Commissioner has to say about it.
Is it correct that a child has already died – admittedly in the Far East – from eating infected meat? What are we going to do about the risk of that?
To return to migratory birds, I think hunters have a great opportunity to be used in this situation to keep us informed of the way things are. We must recognise that the way in which we are selling food in the European Union is a problem: supermarkets force down prices, thereby increasing the risk of a dangerous virus spread. We had a situation where foot-and-mouth came into the European Union. We do not know how it came in, but the Commission’s staff was very good at sorting it out. Swine vesicular disease came into the European Union, as did Newcastle Disease. Where did that come from and why did it come into the European Union? How are these diseases getting in? It is important to understand – wherever we import food from anywhere in the world – that there is always a risk of bringing a disease into the European Union. We must look at that very closely."@en1
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