Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-06-07-Speech-2-016-000"
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"en.20110607.6.2-016-000"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, you rightly said that there have been too many deaths and too many people made sick as a result of this EHEC pathogen, and I think that the situation we find ourselves in also shows that neither Germany nor the European Union are prepared for the sort of spread of EHEC that we are currently seeing.
A simple comparison with a few other countries makes it clear that we could be better. I would just like to refer once again to the example of the United States. Since the 1980s, huge efforts have been made there with regard to research, there is a reporting obligation and there is a centralised disease control authority in Atlanta that has extensive powers for direct intervention when such an epidemic occurs. In Germany, on the other hand, we have two Federal Ministries that are responsible and these ministries clearly could not agree on who was to take responsibility. We also have regional ministries that want to, and must, assume responsibility, but that are clearly overstretched. We have communication problems between laboratories and politicians. Thus, it is wholly unclear when science is to intervene, when disease control measures are to be announced, and when political action is to be taken.
I can understand why a Minister, on receiving the information that the cucumbers are responsible, would issue a warning accordingly, but where is the detailed coordination? Where is the genuine decision-making authority? It seems to me – and I say this very cautiously – that action was taken just as prematurely with the bean sprouts as with the cucumbers. There is something of a discrepancy between scientific findings and political action.
Getting back to what we need to do: we need to establish a reporting obligation throughout Europe, define central laboratories and set up a central body within the European Union with the decision-making power in the event of an outbreak of such a disease. I think that would be the appropriate thing to do.
I am extremely grateful to Mr Liese for mentioning the antibiotics problem. Here, too, we are faced with problems that we are actually already aware of. However, because we shy away from entering into a debate with the medical sector, the pharmaceuticals industry and the intensive livestock farming sector – there is a great deal to be addressed here – we are also not being as consistent as we need to be in the way we deal with the matter of antibiotics resistance. EHEC and antibiotics resistance are both major problems."@en1
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