Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-02-05-Speech-2-286"
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"en.20020205.13.2-286"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, it is, I believe, beyond dispute that public health and food safety are matters of importance to all of us, producers every bit as much as consumers. Preventative consumer protection is on everybody's lips, but my understanding of these things leads me to believe that our role as politicians is not to give additional impetus to the emotional discussions that are still being carried on about the ongoing handling of the BSE crisis.
For my part, I do not want to help discussion of matters concerning BSE to slavishly follow the spirit of the age. In view of current events in Germany, I favour the strictest controls right along the food production chain. We also, of course, need the toughest sanctions when offences are committed. In the meantime, I advocate testing for BSE from 24 months.
Now, when can we actually expect science to come up with definite findings on how individual animals get the disease? I think that when that does come to light, we could say goodbye in no time to the idea of killing off all our livestock. Until then, going down the road of mass slaughter is only one alternative.
The feeding of omnivores with meat and bone meal will no doubt continue to be prohibited, at that for a variety of reasons. We will certainly maintain the current ban on feeding with animal meals for as long as the open declaration of feedingstuffs is not made mandatory and for as long as the processing of offal from healthy animals cannot be carried out with any guarantee of safety. I will mention, though, the formulation used in Mr Olsson's report. He, too, says ‘for the foreseeable future’. ‘For the foreseeable future’ means, for me, that the future may perhaps find us back on a better road ahead.
Let me conclude by saying that it is easy for us to explain to any critically-minded consumer that healthy meat on healthy bone is part of good diet. Processed healthy bone in animal meal is, though, apparently a danger to the omnivore. Just try making sense of that. We could take numerous other examples to illustrate this state of affairs. I take the view that we, bearing as we do political responsibility, have to get back to discussing things in a more matter-of-fact way."@en1
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