Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-12-15-Speech-3-213"
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"en.19991215.9.3-213"2
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"Madam President, my British colleagues must realise that this is a scientific, political, legal and moral problem. On the scientific level, first of all this disease is due to an unknown agent. It is not a bacteria and it is probably not a virus, even though the German Professor Diringer believes otherwise. It is due to a mysterious prion. Secondly, there is no ante-mortem test. Thirdly, the disease is not disappearing despite the ban on meal. Fourthly, acarids full of prions are being found on fodder. This shows that the disease can be transmitted through fodder or grass and might mean that your soil is blighted forever and should not be used for breeding cattle. For the moment therefore, science cannot settle the matter.
You have played the ball into the political court and it is therefore a question of whether trade or health takes priority. Is selling or living more important? The majority of the world’s countries, including your American and Canadian cousins and even your Australian and New Zealand friends in the Commonwealth, are saying that they want to live first and then sell. Yet you are demanding sanctions and creating a legal problem.
Legally, there are two problems, the first of which is the priority among regulations. Should we give priority to the principle of free movement or to the precautionary principle? On the issue of BST, which does not present any danger to human health, we gave priority to the precautionary principle which we pleaded in Seattle. The second legal problem is one of legal responsibility. You are the guilty party because you created this disease from start to finish. In financial terms, we assumed the risk for two years but we cannot accept this risk in terms of health.
There is also a moral or theological problem, as previously identified by Saint Thomas Aquinas, Antigone and Creon. Should human law come before natural law? It appears that, using human law, you have created an epizootic disease and a zoonosis. I would remind you that the latest child to be dying from your disease is only 13 years old. Well, we do not want to die. Finally, on the religious level, your Agriculture Minister told us two years ago in the Committee on Agriculture that this disease was due to God. As Christmas approaches, you should pray to God and hope that Father Christmas brings us a diagnostic test. You should try to ask forgiveness from God. Yet to do this, you need to repent your sins …"@en1
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