Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-05-Speech-2-272"
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"en.20020205.13.2-272"2
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"Madam President, allow me to begin by thanking everyone who has helped with this report: MEPs from other political groups – especially Mrs Roth-Behrendt, former chairperson of the Temporary Committee of Inquiry on BSE – together with the Commission and the Food and Veterinary Office in Dublin.
Finally, I want to repeat what I actually stated at the beginning of my speech. Research is needed within both this and other adjacent areas if we are to be alert to new problems’ and diseases’ arising. Diseases of this kind are dangerous to both animals and human beings, and it is incredibly important that we in the EU devote adequate resources to maintaining the fight against them at a high level.
Globalisation increases with every day that passes. It is a good sign that we are trading more and more across borders. We need a free flow of goods within the European Union, as well as an ever freer flow of goods in the world. It is, however, important that this should not lead to our seeing a freer flow of viruses. Where mad cow disease is concerned, it feels as though the European Union has gone into the free market back to front. First of all, a free market was created, and then we began to investigate whether the rules were adequate for a free market.
In recent years, a number of gratifying measures have been adopted. For example, we have created the European Food Authority. Moreover, food legislation has been reviewed, and this will lead to sound legislation once all the legal acts have entered into force. Experience so far is alarming, however. A look back shows that many Member States have been poor at complying with the legislation. It is, then, not only the defective legislation but also inadequate compliance with this that have resulted in the present position. It is extremely important that we now remedy this and become better at complying with the legislation.
If we consider the connection between these different diseases, we can see that scrapie, which is the oldest TSE disease, was discovered as long as several hundred years ago, while BSE, which attacks bovines, was not discovered until 1986. We are obviously at a stage where a lot is happening. Life continues, and so does its negative sides. We must therefore be prepared for the possibility of constantly discovering new problems.
During the autumn, there was some anxiety that BSE might also be able to attack sheep. That is presumably the background to Paragraph 11, about the need to monitor sheep, being included in the report. I believe that its inclusion is a mistake and call upon Members not to vote in favour of it, for it appears that the investigation which was to have been carried out on sheep’s brains was most likely carried out on cows’ brains. Scientists too, of course, make mistakes from time to time.
The problem with BSE is that it is a disease which crosses the species barrier. This means that there is a risk of people too being infected. We know that Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is a major worry in this context.
I want to point out some of the measures we propose for the future in the report. First of all, I want to state that, for ethical reasons, ruminants must obviously never be fed with meat meal. They are not carnivores by nature and nor, therefore, must they be forced to eat meat. It is, however, sensible – and we return to this in the second report – for primary produce that is suitable for human consumption also perhaps to be used as feed. The problem is that there is a risk of disease if an animal eats other animals of the same species. What is termed a cannibalism ban ought therefore to be introduced, prohibiting the feeding of animals with feed produced from animals of the same species.
There is a considerable risk of infection, and there has been little in the way of compliance. We must therefore probably observe that it will not be possible within the foreseeable future to remove the ban on feeding omnivores with meat meal and bone meal. In the long term, when there is better compliance, it may perhaps be possible to do so.
Regarding the important issue of sanctions, I want to put a direct question to Commissioner Byrne. If individual Member States do not meet their Treaty obligations, the EU must have powers to intervene by taking measures to guarantee food safety – an issue that we also address in a number of points in the report. We also believe that the Commission must be able to impose sanctions upon Member States that have not done enough to apply this type of legislation. It would be particularly interesting to hear the Commissioner’s view on this."@en1
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