Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-05-05-Speech-2-409"
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"en.20090505.28.2-409"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank the European Parliament and in particular the rapporteur, Mr Wojciechowski, for having supported the main elements of the Commission proposal on the protection of animals at the time of killing.
I would very much welcome your support of the Commission proposal. If successfully adopted, the European Union would have the potential to lead and innovate globally on animal welfare.
In particular, I am pleased that the European Parliament accepted the general approach of the proposal, which is to ensure the animal welfare legislation applicable to slaughterhouses is in line with the hygiene package which was adopted back in 2004.
The current legislation on the protection of animals at slaughter dates back to 1993 and is clearly not in line with the latest developments in the areas of food safety, animal health and animal welfare. Under the current proposal, slaughterhouse operators will have to establish standard operating procedures, rely on welfare indicators for stunning, and personnel will have to receive training on animal welfare.
On the issue of religious slaughter, I would like to stress that the Commission fully shares the attachment of the European Parliament to freedom of religion and to underline that the Commission’s intention is to maintain the status quo on this sensitive matter. The Treaty clearly states the need to take into account practices related to religion in the formulation of Community policy. It is clear that there are many different practices regarding religious slaughter across the Member States of the Union.
The Commission suggests that subsidiarity should be maintained in this area. It has worked well for the past 15 years and should continue to work well in the future. In this respect, we can accept in principle, subject to rewording, amendments that reflect the approach of the current legislation, which preserves the right of freedom of religion while allowing Member States to adopt or maintain stricter rules. In this regard, I would note that there seems to be agreement in Council along these lines.
I would now like to say a few words on the practice of backyard slaughter. Today, the slaughter of animals for private consumption is permitted outside slaughterhouses (except cattle), but pigs, sheep and goats must have previously been stunned. Some citizens in the Member States traditionally slaughter pigs for Christmas and lambs for Easter. The preservation of these traditions is important to the Commission but there is no need to derogate from the stunning of animals, thereby undermining the welfare of the animals. Therefore the Commission believes that prior stunning should always be performed when pigs or lambs are slaughtered outside slaughterhouses.
Another point of the proposal is related to the establishment of a national centre of reference. We believe that this element is essential to guarantee proper enforcement of the proposed measures. In slaughterhouses, official inspectors perform food safety controls, mainly on carcasses. They have little time and limited competences to assess animal welfare parameters. These days, stunning equipment is complex and difficult to evaluate in relation to their welfare efficiency. National reference centres would meet the need for technical and scientific information on the welfare of animals at slaughter and the Commission considers that this requirement should be maintained in the proposal.
The Commission also believes that certificates of competence required for the personnel in slaughterhouses should be issued following an independent examination. This system has been developed in other areas of animal welfare, both in the public and the private sector. Where this has been properly implemented, it has provided good results. This should therefore be extended to all EU slaughterhouses.
Animals are also killed in huge numbers outside slaughterhouses in order to control the spread of disease. It is true that requirements already exist for animal health purposes, but today’s requirements do not relate to animal welfare. People consider that mass culling for disease-control purposes should be performed in the most humane way possible. Transparency, which means proper reporting, is therefore essential. Furthermore, previous experience in these emergency situations has shown that it is crucial to collect information on good practices and on mistakes that might have occurred. Proper monitoring and reporting on animal welfare should therefore be required in cases of mass culling."@en1
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