Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-15-Speech-5-046"
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"en.20001215.3.5-046"2
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"Mr President, if I read it right I am the last speaker in the debate from the floor of the House. As a child, my father was quite fond of talking himself. He used to accuse me of wanting to have the last word. It appears that I am having the last word here not only in this debate but in the millennium from the floor of this House, so he would be quite proud of me if he was still alive.
In any case, we have had widely divergent views expressed here. I want to congratulate the Commission on bringing forward this proposal. The rapporteur has researched this area very thoroughly and made an excellent report even if I might not agree with all of it, and he pointed out that it seems we did not do so well in the past. Spending under the last programme actually fell between 1997 and 1998. We have to ask ourselves why we failed in the past to get industry in the European Union to take up the money that was available. Obviously, we have some learning to do.
I agree that we should spend money on this subject. The consumers need correct information and they need reassurance. I sincerely hope that it is not anyone's ideological view of what is safe and right that will be put forward, but information with a proper scientific basis.
Organic farming is fine as far as it goes. I have nothing against it. I was an organic farmer myself at one time, because everyone was an organic farmer when I started farming at 15 years of age, which is some time ago. What the consumers of Europe should understand today is that food was never so cheap as it is now. It was never so plentiful as it is now. It was never as safe as it is today in spite of some of the problems that still exist and will probably continue.
There is another point we should remember. Everyone in Europe has enough to eat for the most part. Everyone has sufficient food, so if we advertise one product it will obviously militate against the consumption of another product. The European Commission has to be extremely careful. If dairy products and beef, on which we spend an awful lot of money and indeed sheepmeat as well, although we do not have surpluses of it, are advertised with public money to compete with products which are not subsidised like pig meat and poultry meat, then obviously we are upsetting the balance of the market and doing an injustice to some of our producers. We must be extremely careful about that.
Mr Rübig points out that there are so many things we can sell abroad. That is extremely important because, as time goes by, we will not be allowed to continue our old practice of producing low-quality products and selling them highly-subsidised, unprocessed and with no value added on foreign markets. In a world where the population is growing by 80 and 90 million a year, there must be a market for European food, because no place in the world is better suited to the production of food and no farmers in the world know better how to respond to opportunities than European farmers. There must be a future there. Mr Mulder is right when he said that the common agriculture policy is designed not only for food but also for the social objective of keeping the maximum number of people in rural areas. By using modern technology and using modern science and modernising our industry, we have made food available to the poor at the right price. This was never done when we were producing organically.
Of course, if we can produce and promote food that is better for the environment and takes animal welfare into consideration, and sell that on world markets, then we will be really fulfilling the vocation for which the common agricultural policy was intended."@en1
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