Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-02-13-Speech-1-103"
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"en.20060213.11.1-103"2
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"Mr President, I too welcome this report and would like to thank the Commission and the rapporteur for actions which demonstrate that the EU is still prepared to take a leading role in actively improving and promoting animal welfare issues.
The proposal starts from the basis that the existing standards for keeping chicken for meat production are indeed very low in parts of the European Union at the present time, and that is demonstrated by painful leg disorders, enlargement of the heart, sudden death syndrome, ammonia burns on feet and so on. I welcome the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development’s proposals, but I still believe there is room for further improvement and that is why I have also signed the amendments tabled by Mr Jørgensen. In particular we need further action on stocking density, on uninterrupted rest periods – a minimum of six hours in the darkness – and on issues such as the inhumane issue of beak trimming.
That said, even if we only go as far as the proposal put forward by Mr Berman, there would be a big step forward for animal welfare, but it will also be a big step forward for consumers. Consumers worry about the conditions under which their chicken meat is produced and they worry about the health of the chicken they are eating. Properly reared chicken will be a better piece of meat when it goes on the plate.
Finally, I would like to address the issue of cost. I have looked at the various estimates of what this would cost the industry. Even if you take the highest estimate, if you aggregate that estimate down to the cost per bird, you are talking about one British penny per bird. It is not going to be animal welfare measures that make our industry uncompetitive. I accept that the industry is facing real challenges from places like Thailand and Brazil, but there are other factors – cost of labour and other costs – that we cannot compete on. It is not animal welfare standards that will make the difference in terms of whether our industry survives or not, so do not use competition as a reason for rejecting these animal welfare standards."@en1
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