Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-05-Speech-2-273"
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"en.20020205.13.2-273"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner Byrne, this being the fifteenth year since cases of the disease first appeared, one might think we had done everything necessary and had got a grip on BSE. When we in the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development were drafting our opinion and yet again pointing out that all Member States should now be carrying out their checks properly, we did think that, well, that has to be re-emphasised. We could not have guessed that it would become such a live issue, yet we are now learning from Germany, mainly from Bavaria and the Rhineland Palatinate, that the tests were done carelessly and the checking handed over to private firms which were ill-suited to it. One can only scratch one's head in bafflement. One can, of course, tell the Commission to better exercise supervisory control, but one can scarcely demand that any more, as the people at the bottom know just as well what it is all about. Let us face it, BSE is a dangerous disease, and it is actually scandalous that tests are done only from the age of thirty months. Most of the animals that end up in the slaughter line have not been tested.
Take Great Britain, where tests are still not being done at all, because animals over 30 months old are not permitted to enter the food chain, even though tests are, of course, necessary in order to establish the incidence of BSE among animals that are not getting into the food chain. When it comes to the scientists who made a laughing-stock of themselves by examining sheep whose brains then turned out to be those of cattle, we cannot of course say, ‘OK, then there is no danger to sheep.’ There is a danger to sheep, so they too have to be tested.
Turning to the circulation of animal bone meal, there are still evidently thousands of tonnes of infected or potentially infected animal bone meal making their way around the world, so that BSE is still spreading further afield and cropping up in places where we had never expected it. We see here, Commissioner Byrne, that the feed ban is evidently inadequate. It must be stated where the stuff has to go and how it is to be destroyed.
As the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development has also made clear, the same applies to feeding with swill and food leftovers, which has, over and over again, brought us foot-and-mouth disease and rinderpest when feed contained these in untreated form. This means that, here too, we can do nothing by means of a ban on its own, but must say where the stuff should go. If we had voted on the so-called interim report – ‘The Handling of Animal By-products’ – all of ten years ago, we would, of course, be under far less pressure from BSE, and if we had had it all along, there would have been no BSE. I would say the same about swill and food leftovers: if we had had proper handling of these food leftovers, there would have been no infection with foot-and-mouth disease and rinderpest.
We must reach the stage where one system prescribes this for all countries. Those who have an economic interest in bringing about the proper handling of animal by-products must be granted licences and punished by their withdrawal if they fail to do what the law prescribes. Whoever breaks this law must lose his livelihood, because human health in our country is at stake here. We must be bold in showing this rigour, or else – even in ten years' time – we will still be discussing the recurrence of lapses.
Mr Byrne, I wish to expressly confirm to you that the Commission bears no responsibility for these latest failures. They are the responsibility of the Member States. The Commission has also done good work on the drafting of the interim report and on its presentation."@en1
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