Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-04-Speech-2-366"
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"en.20070904.29.2-366"2
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"Mr President, first I wish to thank the rapporteur, Mrs Jeggle, for her excellent reports. Milk is one of the most important areas of agricultural production. It is all the more important as beef production is largely dependent on the calves which dairy cattle farms produce. Milk production is also eminently suited to areas where natural conditions are poorest. For example, dairy farming in northern Europe can effectively exploit the fact that the arable land there is an excellent source of coarse fodder, which also makes production resistant to rain, frost and other unfavourable natural conditions.
The proposals before us will simplify EU laws on the dairy industry. The quality class system for butter would be simplified, the strict classification for fat content abolished, aid for school milk made independent of its fat content and the intervention system clarified. These measures seem positive ones and I want to thank Commissioner Fischer Boel for these reforms.
The big question is the overall reform of the milk sector, which is to take place in the near future in connection with the Health Check, the mid-term review of the CAP. Its main focus is milk quotas.
The current balance in milk production has been achieved thanks to milk quotas. It is because of these that the 1 300 million kilo butter mountain, which we still had at the end of the 1980s, has melted away and at the same time it has been possible to guarantee consumers a steady supply and diverse range of agricultural produce. A predictable framework within which milk producers can develop production has also been established.
In my opinion, it is the EU’s obligation to guarantee such predictable frameworks for milk production in the future too. This is important because the necessary investments are made to cover periods of time lasting decades and they are massive sums for family farms. Furthermore, the regulation of production is a slow process because it takes around two years before cows are ready for production. That is why it is in the interests of both the consumer and producer to continue with milk quotas. If the quotas are abolished it will mean the investments that farmers have made buying quotas and thereby stabilising production conditions will have gone to waste. With these observations, we would like to support the reports presented."@en1
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