Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-10-29-Speech-5-031"
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"en.19991029.3.5-031"2
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"Mr President, I understand the position of our British friends, just as I understand the position of our Portuguese friends who are also concerned, just as I understood the position of our Belgian friends in the dioxin affair and just as I understand even better the position of the French in the sewage sludge affair.
But this is not the same thing. Atypical Creutzfeldt-Jakob is a terrifying disease which affects young men or women of around twenty years of age. First they lose the ability to move, to walk, they are confined to an armchair, their muscles waste away, they find it more and more difficult to breathe, they can see themselves dying and then die after six months. It is true that our British friends have taken precautions over traceability, that they have introduced a passport for cattle, that different types of meal have been banned since 1990, that conditions for the slaughter of animals have been changed, that lymph nodes, spinal marrow and lymphoid tissue are now removed and that only cattle less than thirty months old are exported. They have seen to it that the consequences of the terrible mistake made by the Demulder brothers in Yorkshire, which was the original cause of the disease, have been mitigated. It is nevertheless still the case that slaughter by means of a special pistol causes particles of the brain or lymphoid tissue to enter the jugular vein and from there they can reach the muscle mass. It is also true that there are still 3,000 cases every year in Great Britain, and that there are 40 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob, which is the upper limit for normal rates of occurrence. It is nevertheless true that there are 650 cases of BSE per million head of cattle. People say to me that the cattle that are exported are in perfect condition. That may be true, but the disease incubates for 15 or 20 years. There may be no clinical signs when the cattle are imported, but they may be incubating the disease, and so may the Englishman who has eaten the meat! It is also true that the first results of the screening tests show that cattle that are clinically perfect may in fact already be affected. I am sure you understand why there is still some doubt. It was thought that the disease was transmitted by different kinds of meal. These kinds of meal have been banned but the disease still exists. It was thought that the disease was transmitted from mother to calf, and there is undoubtedly a third means of transmission perhaps through scrapie, through the soil or through fodder. There are some accursed fields from which a herd is removed and then, two years later, a new herd is put there, which also contracts the disease. Perhaps the same thing applies to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. You can understand then, why the French food safety agency recommended not lifting the ban. People say to us that things would be different if it were a European Agency. Would they? So French biology is one thing and Brussels biology is quite another. This harks back to Lysenko who, in the days of the Soviet Union, told us that there was one biology for proletarians and one for capitalists. This is completely untrue! The laws of biology apply to everyone. Professor Dormond and Jeanne Bruger Picou are two of the greatest scientists around, as is Professor Dirringer in Germany, as is one of the Scottish consultants, who also has his doubts.
People tell me that the ban has been lifted, and that first Germany and then France is resisting. I must remind you that at the beginning of 1996, when five German states refused to accept British beef, the European Commission tried to bring a liability action against them when all that these states were trying to do was to protect their citizens. Then a few weeks later, the European Commission imposed the ban and admitted that the German states had been right. We all agree on opposing meat containing american hormones and to the use of somatotrophin, a lactation hormone, when there is no scientific evidence to say that it is dangerous. Somatotrophin can cause mastitis in cows, but if we were to inject ourselves with it, we might experience a swelling in the chest, but it would not kill us. How can we refuse to accept meat containing american hormones and somatotrophin, when there is no clearly established risk, and yet accept British meat which presents a serious risk? How can we make a case for Europe and the precautionary principle at the WTO, whilst refusing to apply the precautionary principle in the case of British cows? There is a hierarchy of standards, and top of the hierarchy of standards is the health standard, then the standard of international trade. After all, our British friends are just reaping what they have sown. It was an Englishman, Ricardo, who explained the laws of international trade and its comparative advantages to us. He explained to the Portuguese that they should produce wine instead of cloth because the English were better at producing cloth. Well, my dear British friends, you should realise that others are better than you at producing cows, and maybe you should stop producing cows. In any case, you have been punished for your sins, which result from excessive free trade practises and from an excessively ultraliberal approach, for that is the fundamental cause of this pandemic and of this disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans. We cannot take the risk of allowing young men of twenty to die just so that international trade may flourish."@en1
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