Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-11-Speech-2-284"
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"en.20000411.11.2-284"2
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".
Mr President, as draftsman of the Committee on Agriculture, I should like to recapitulate a number of the committee’s main causes for concern on this question. The most important objective of the Commission proposal – and I should like expressly to stress this once again – is the traceability of beef or bovine animals from birth through to processing and sale.
This is one of the consequences of the BSE crisis and we must bear the objective of this proposal, i.e. traceability, in mind when debating what information should appear on the label. We want labels which are practicable, simple, safe, cheap and easy to control. Labels must be easy for consumers to understand, which is why the information needs to be kept to a minimum. Consumers want information, not a novel.
Information on the fattening process and, where applicable, on antibiotics or other stimulants administered, as demanded in proposed Amendment No 48, have absolutely no business to be on the label. Information which does not come under compulsory labelling but which is requested by market participants or is already included on labels in the Member States can continue to be included within the framework of voluntary labelling. This applies in particular to information on the region of origin of the meat.
As far as the entry into force of the regulation is concerned, we agree in principle with the Commission’s approach that compulsory labelling should be introduced in two stages, but we do not agreed with the timetable insofar as we think that the date of 1 January 2003 has been put far too far back.
We shall have problems explaining this to consumers. The Committee on Agriculture agreed on the wording “by 1 January 2002 at the latest” in a compromise on the introduction of compulsory information on origin, i.e. stage 2. Now the Committee on the Environment has opted for 1 September 2001 and I think that we can agree to this date. It is only a matter of four months. But we are emphatically against making all the information, including the indication of the place of birth, compulsory when the regulation enters into force in September 2000, rather than in two stages. That makes no sense, as the electronic database on which traceability depends is not yet up and running in the majority of Member States. A compulsory labelling system for beef can only be as good as the system for registering bovine animals and all their movements."@en1
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