Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-12-17-Speech-2-007"
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"en.20021217.1.2-007"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner Byrne, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start with very warm thanks to all the colleagues who did serious work in the committee and on the report. I am especially grateful to our chairman, Mrs Redondo, to the secretariat, which did excellent work, to the scientific service, and to the Commission.
February 2001 saw what was no doubt the most serious outbreak of foot and mouth disease Europe had ever known. It affected Ireland, the Netherlands, France and, in particular, Great Britain. In Great Britain alone, where the epidemic indeed broke out, official estimates state that 6.5 million animals were killed in the course of combating it. Other sources mention up to 10 million. The Netherlands lost 285 000 animals and France, where there were four outbreaks, 65 000 of them. The consequences were catastrophic for everyone concerned. It makes no sense for any future policy on epidemics to be based solely on the slaughter of animals as a means of eradicating the virus, and no such approach will any longer be tolerated by the people of the EU.
At the beginning of this year, our Parliament set up a temporary committee - not, as some Members unfortunately persist in believing, a committee of inquiry - which had the aim of helping to create an improved policy that would work not only at EU level. One of our tasks was to use numerous public hearings and on-site visits to analyse the events in the Member States affected, to evaluate them fairly and take what we thereby learned as a means of drawing relevant conclusions as regards a Europe-wide policy on foot and mouth disease. This also means that we have no judicial function, nor are we able to resolve scientific disputes. In our report, we cannot pass judgments, let alone condemn anyone in advance for things we cannot prove anyway. This was not within our remit and we were not equipped for that purpose. Ladies and gentlemen, I am quite sure that any other government in the EU would have had similar problems to grapple with had it faced a comparable scenario, with between 50 and 70 simultaneous outbreaks across the whole country, and with sheep being affected as well.
We now know that, after economic and trade policy considerations led to vaccination being stopped in the EU in 1992, the emergency plans that have been elaborated have been defective, being designed for only a few outbreaks rather than for a worst-case scenario of this kind. The fact that the International Office of Epizootics, the OIE, would only restore the designation of ‘FMD-free without vaccination’ twelve months after the last vaccination meant that the watchword was ‘kill rather than inoculate, or just inoculate in order to cull afterwards’. That this has been cut to six months since May this year represents a massive step forward. We advocate three months.
I want now to list some of our most important demands. Not only must future policy include effective emergency plans for the combating of epidemics, but all the Member States must check how their communications networks and decision-making structures would perform in an emergency, and run cross-border emergency exercises in real time. It is also essential that plans should take far greater account than hitherto of the psychosocial effects of any policy on the farmers affected by the epidemic and on all those banned from moving animals. Greater attention must be given to bio-safety. Every single farmer must be careful about what he feeds to his animals, from whom he buys them, and how quickly he brings them and his old stock together. For it was a farmer's irresponsible working practices that caused the epidemic to break out in Great Britain. There must be further improvements to the animals' traceability and therefore also to the way they are identified. It is also important to do everything possible to prevent illegal imports of animal products from countries where foot and mouth disease is endemic. The Commission has already decided that, for example, travellers from these countries may no longer bring products of this sort into the EU. But our most important demand in terms of action against future epidemics is that emergency vaccination should be regarded as the recourse of first choice, the object being to allow the animals to live on and assess products from them on a regional basis. This would be a crucial improvement on what was done in the past, as there continues to be no dispute about the absolute absence of any health risk to humans from the meat of inoculated animals and from other products derived from them. This, then, is an area in which there is an urgent need for people to be informed.
There is, though, one thing that I want to make clear. Infected stocks will always be slaughtered, as will any animals put at risk by contact with them. Economic considerations and the demands of the internal market, among other things, mean that there will be no early return to general vaccination, nor has it been called for in the hearings to date by any reputable expert. Do not, then, raise people's hopes too high. To do so would indeed be irresponsible.
Nevertheless, there needs to be further research towards finding an appropriate and durable marker vaccine capable of covering all serotypes and enabling an undoubted distinction to be drawn between inoculated and infected animals. I might mention that, in Germany until 1990, only cattle were inoculated, to the exclusion of all other animals.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that a policy such as that which we are proposing will put an end to images the like of which were broadcast around the globe last year.
Let me just say something about the voting. Vote for my amendments and for those tabled by the Socialist Group! They will do away with a whole array of accusations that have been levelled at the British Government, charges that we as a parliament – or so I personally understand parliamentary practice – are not entitled to bring in this way and are thus not justified. Being a politician myself, I can quite understand that they were made in an excess of political enthusiasm, but please do your infighting at home. For that purpose, the European Parliament is the least suitable of all platforms. And one more thing: there are fourteen Member States in the European Union besides Great Britain. It is important, ladies and gentlemen, that not only the British Government, but also the Council, the Commission, the candidate countries, the OIE and other states, such as, for example, the USA, Australia, Argentina and South Africa should be able to take our report seriously. The combating of epidemics calls for a worldwide strategy, as foot and mouth disease is an international disease and not a British one. It is my view that we, representing the peoples of the fifteen Member States, have achieved outstanding success in discussing this problem area as it deserves to be discussed, and in coming up with final conclusions that point the way ahead. What is, unfortunately, certain is that there will certainly be another outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The question is only that of where and when it will occur and with what intensity. Against that, we must be armed."@en1
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