Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-04-05-Speech-4-115"
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"en.20010405.6.4-115"2
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"The European Parliament’s resolution on foot-and-mouth disease deserves to be approved, notably because it steps back from the policy of slaughter, which can be useful selectively, but scarcely seems effective in a case like that of Great Britain. Public opinion is doubtful, and it is right. So the resolution we have just voted on is rightly geared towards authorisation of urgent vaccination, either in a particular region affected by foot-and-mouth disease, or in a ‘buffer’ region, or in the case of rare breeds.
Beyond these urgent measures, we might wonder why foot-and-mouth, once common in the countryside of Europe, and not usually fatal to animals (let alone humans), should now be producing a national crisis. The answer is two-fold.
First, the disease spreads faster than before because agriculture has become massively geared towards production, and is therefore highly specialised and fragmented. One animal can spend different stages of its life in several parts of a country, or even of Europe. It is transported many times, the link with the original breeder is broken and traceability becomes unreliable. So we think it is important to re-establish more stable rearing, where everyone knows who is responsible and where animals are not treated like inert merchandise. That is part of the agricultural reform we are proposing for the years ahead.
Secondly, the massive slaughter seems to be motivated by economic reasons which are not always transparent. One of these appears to be a determination to maintain exports at any price, because some purchaser countries regard meat from vaccinated animals as indistinguishable from meat from sick animals. Under those circumstances vaccination would be useless from the economic point of view, because in both cases the meat is worth less. I find this financial reasoning absurd. Surely exports could be accompanied by a vaccination certificate? And why must absolutely everything be subordinated to exports? That just contributes to productivity-driven farming and necessitates subsidies which cost the taxpayer dear, all to achieve, ultimately, the destabilisation of farming in less developed countries. The system is verging on insanity, and things will have to be put back on an even keel in the near future."@en1
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