Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-10-25-Speech-3-017"
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"en.20001025.2.3-017"2
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"Mr President, I beg to move the adoption of the report in my name on the White Paper on food safety. It gives me great pleasure to do so. I should also like to refer to the 19 amendments we have before us on this report. I accept 16 of them. The three that I do not accept are Amendments Nos 14, 16 and 17, and I prefer 15 to 5 and 10 to 6.
We need close working with national food safety authorities and with international bodies. We need to see the work of the current five scientific committees and the Steering Committee subsumed within this. It will be within a small headquarters, professionally run, accessible to the Commission and Parliament, although the site is not for now.
I thank my colleagues of all parties and all Member States. I thank them for the constructive dialogue we have had. I thank the Commission and its staff. I thank the Council and the French Presidency for their messages of support. I thank Parliament's secretariat. We have here a proposal which can work to improve the safety of our foods, to restore the confidence of the public in our respective nations. I hope that Parliament will endorse it.
As Feuerbach said: "der Mensch ist, was er isst", man is what he eats. We are what we eat – and sadly that is true in my case. I am clearly what I eat.
More seriously, as a result of eating badly some people suffer long-term illness and indeed some people die of food poisoning their bodies. Over recent decades we have seen many scandals: olive oil, contaminated wine, mineral water, beef, dioxins and sludge. We have learned the new vocabulary of e-coli, salmonella and listeria and so on. We have had scare and scandal leading to fear, panic and public enquiry. Our constituents around Europe look to us to reassure them that the food they eat is safe and the water they drink is drinkable. They have lost faith in the current machinery and mechanisms to control and remove risk from "farm to table", in the phrase that is so often used.
The truth is that you cannot eliminate risk. That is not within our grasp. Risk will always occur from animal feed and crop sprays of agriculture to the processing of food, transport, refrigeration, storage and retailing. And then the risk goes on to our own home, our kitchens, our larders and to our cooking skills and habits in those kitchens.
If we cannot eliminate risk, we can at least take action to identify it and manage it. New action is needed. We must put into place a framework of legislation, guidance and good practice on food, feed, pesticides, dioxins, labelling, additives, novel foods and so on. Alongside that framework we need a new body to restore public confidence and the respect of Member States.
My report proposes the establishment of a European Food Safety Agency which should be authoritative, independent, objective, accountable, transparent and intelligible. Its focus must be on safety and its method must be science. Its task is risk assessment and then giving advice on that risk management. The Commission's task is risk management and control. Parliament's task will be the scrutiny and monitoring of both.
We have a rapid alert system. That needs to be improved but it can only be swiftly accountable to Parliament if it continues to be run by the Commission. Nevertheless it should be physically and operationally close to the EFSA. Its remit should be extended to cover feedstuffs as well as foodstuffs.
The director of the ESFA is key. His appointment must be by the Commission, but after a hearing by the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, probably involving other committees such as the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development. There needs to be an annual report and presentation to Parliament and risk reports coming to the Commission, Parliament and the Council. The board needs to reflect the range of relevant experience in production, processing, retailing, consumption, law and so on. Scientists need to give a report on assessment to the board who then makes sure that it is in terms the consumers understand, add any recommendations on risk management and submit it to the Commission and to us."@en1
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