Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-03-24-Speech-2-493"
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"en.20090324.37.2-493"2
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".
Madam President, first of all, I would like to thank the shadow rapporteurs, as they helped me a great deal in improving the Commission report. I must also mention the cooperation with the Czech Presidency. They, too, had a good deal of positive input to offer and we were only a couple of small unresolved issues away from reaching an agreement at first reading, although it is, in any case, that bit more democratic to have a vote in the House first.
When I first heard that the Commission was putting forward a proposal for a regulation on novel foods, I did wonder what was meant by ‘novel foods’. I was also surprised that the Commission proposal took the internal market as its starting point.
I will begin with that point. Like so many topics in this Parliament, this topic, too, can be approached from the perspective of the internal market, the producer or the economy. It can also be approached, however, from the point of view of food safety, consumers, health and the environment: in other words, on the basis of the welfare of the European citizen. In the EU, there is much talk about the environment and animal welfare and my thought was that this report should be more than just words: we should have action too. So when there was a choice to be made in my report on novel foods, in the first instance I opted for food safety, consumer welfare, the environment and animal welfare. I sincerely hope, and indeed the shadow rapporteurs have already informed me that it will be the case, that they support me on this point in the vote.
Innovation is, of course, tremendously important. That brings me on to my second point, namely what are ‘novel foods’, actually? That was never really made clear in the Commission proposal. The Commission informed me that what we were talking about was, for instance, nanotechnology and meat from cloned animals. Let me deal with nanotechnology first. I had absolutely no idea what it was. I think that lots of consumers are in the same position, but it appears that it already occurs in our food more than we might think: in energy drinks, in packaging materials for fruit and vegetables, but also in the likes of certain oils and teas. Regulation is therefore needed very urgently, as technology is all well and good, and can be a boon for the consumer, but we do need to know for sure that the food on our tables is safe. It therefore needs to come within the scope of the regulation.
Turning to meat from cloned animals, Parliament has already stated in a resolution to the Commission that it did not want meat from cloned animals on the market as food. If meat from cloned animals were to come within the scope of this regulation, we, as Parliament, would be admitting indirectly that we would, in fact, approve of meat of this nature coming onto our market. That is not acceptable, and meat from cloned animals must therefore be left outside the scope of this regulation. This is not really a safety issue. Cloning for meat is usually associated with a great deal of animal suffering, and many of these cloned animals do not even live for long. It therefore has no added value for food supply at this point in time."@en1
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