Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-03-12-Speech-2-329"
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"en.20020312.13.2-329"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner Byrne, there is a popular saying that politics is a dirty business. Does it become even dirtier when politicians have to deal with such unsavoury matters as pigswill and abattoir waste? Would it not perhaps be more consistent if we did not deal with these matters at all but simply proclaimed an outright ban? If we commit ourselves to the search for sensible solutions, does this necessarily make us somehow corrupt or venal? All sorts of inferences like these have been doing the rounds lately. I do not believe they have any substance. The European Parliament has shown courage. I should like to pay tribute to Mrs Paulsen for her systematic work on this issue and for her close cooperation with our committee. As draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, I have had the task of representing the interests of the farming community. I believe we have successfully integrated their concerns into this common position. May I also thank you, Commissioner Byrne, for our long conversations and debates. They were no bad thing. They were fruitful and, besides, they were quite enjoyable too.
Here we are looking specifically at high-quality protein which is to be fed to non-vegetarian animals. We do not intend to make vegetarians of them, any more than we can induce carrion-eating birds to stop eating carrion. It would be the death of them. Similarly, when it comes to human foodstuffs, we want a system that will recycle all the high-quality nutrients. We cannot adopt a set of rules at the expense of the hungry people in the world, whereby anything that is no longer good enough for us is simply destroyed or abandoned.
We are not legislating on catering waste here; it is merely a matter of the Commission presenting its own legislative proposal, to which we accord the same systematic and meticulous treatment that we gave to meat and bone meal. I do not understand the position of some people who are saying that meat and bone meal can be fed but catering waste cannot. Then there are others, of course, who are saying that catering waste can be fed but not meat and bone meal. So both positions exist. That is why I tabled my proposal. Your compromise proposal, Mrs Paulsen, is fine. Tomorrow I shall move an oral amendment in which I shall alter the time scale in my amendments, which are similar in substance to the compromise; this alteration relates to the time before the entry into force of the proposed regulation. I believe the alteration will make the amendments compatible, and we can then adopt them as they stand. We shall then have a sound solution. Thereafter, Mr Byrne, I hope that, on your initiative, we shall soon have the new version back here on the table. Then we shall engage in some more of the good old cut and thrust, and we shall revel in it. Politics is not a dirty business; it is actually a most enjoyable occupation!"@en1
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