Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-05-Speech-4-022"
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"en.20090205.3.4-022"2
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"I should like to echo all the compliments that have already been paid to our rapporteur. Needless to say, public and animal health should be at the heart of cattle feed legislation. This translates into clear rules regarding the use and labelling of raw materials. This should, of course, remain workable and not lead to a greater administrative burden or, as has already been mentioned, jeopardise the manufacturers’ intellectual property. We will continue to monitor this with a critical eye, but it looks as if the new regulation will meet these requirements.
I should like to make an observation with regard to inspection. Once again, effective controls and sanctions to separate the wheat from the chaff will make or break this legislation. The regulation stipulates that the penalties which the Member States may apply themselves must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. I would urge the European Commission to closely monitor the situation in the near future, to make sure this is the case in all the countries of the European Union. It is, after all, unacceptable for one country to be stricter than another. An excellent case in point is, to my mind, the suspended sentences that were given this week, ten years after the event, in the Belgian dioxin scandal.
Finally, I should like to mention a topic that cannot remain untouched, namely meat and bone meal. Following the emotional speech of the first speaker from the Non-Attached Members, I shall confine myself to the facts. Meat and bone meal in animal feed has been banned since the BSE crisis. However, in the case of chickens, for example, this leads to a shortage of animal protein in their feed, quite apart from the fair criticism that valuable proteins are destroyed. Moreover, animal feed is the largest overhead for the five million cattle farmers in the European Union who have not got it easy to begin with.
Of course, we do not want to revert back to a situation in which animal proteins from within the same species end up in the feed. Cannibalism: never again! We need to put tests in place in order to handle this situation properly. The European Commission has indicated that these tests could be available in 2009, which means that meat and bone meal could be reintroduced in the feed of chickens or pigs, for example, in a safe manner. I should like to find out from the European Commission what the latest is on this score and what steps we can expect in this respect in the coming year."@en1
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