Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-06-07-Speech-2-013-000"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20110607.6.2-013-000"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, Commissioner, you are right that this is a public health issue, a very serious one, and our focus should now be on caring for the sick and identifying the source, but then we have to look to the long term and find out how we stop it happening again.
A few weeks ago, I met a representative of the US Food and Drug Administration. She was telling me about the problems of E coli in fruit and vegetables in the United States and we discussed how this was not common in the European Union. Now we have had this outbreak, so we have to ask ourselves some questions. Is it about our farming practices, as Peter Liese just mentioned? Is it about intensive farming, hot-housing fruit and vegetables? Is it about overuse of antibiotics in livestock? Is it about manure spreading? Would more accurate food labelling have helped us to identify more quickly the source of the contamination? I note that the Council is not here today, but the Council is resisting proper country of origin labelling on our foods. I hope they will listen to this debate in the future.
So, Commissioner, we need to investigate thoroughly for the longer term and we need to learn lessons and integrate them into our policies. Too often, we hear from this Commission and from many in this House about over-regulation, but, as with the banks, I am starting to wonder whether we tend to put the needs of market and supply chains ahead of those of public protection and the consumer. ‘Business as usual’ is not going to be good enough. It is not normal that people in Europe go out for a salad and die as a consequence, and we need policy change to address this."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples