Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-13-Speech-2-313"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070313.23.2-313"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:translated text |
".
Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, may I straightaway congratulate Mrs Bernadette Bourzai, substitute member of Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, whose commitment and involvement deserve special mention. I shall also congratulate the Commission on its excellent proposal, which should bring more clarity into the marketing of calf meat and enable the consumer to be better informed.
This proposal is the result of a long process of negotiation within the Member States and the relevant professional associations to give clearer information to consumers and allow fairer competition between the different producers. Most of the latter were actually penalised by a designation that applied to a product, veal, whose physiological development resulted in great differences within a few months because of its rapidity. A veal calf develops, within a few weeks, from being a monogastric mammal, during the time that it feeds almost entirely on milk, to being a ruminant mammal with four stomachs as soon as it moves on to fibrous foods such as grass, hay and cereals. It is not difficult to imagine the consequences of this development on the dietary and nutritional composition of the meat, including a different vitamin content and the white, pink or red colouring of the meat resulting from the fact, in particular, that there is no iron in milk but there is in plants.
Therefore, to treat as equal and call ‘veal’ meat from an animal up to the age of six or eight months that has been fed on milk and meat from an animal aged 14 to 16 months that eats, grazes and ruminates, allows neither the consumer nor the producer to determine what he is actually eating.
Within the European area, this harmonisation which makes it possible to differentiate between calf meat and that of young bovine animals, and I say this without in any way prejudging the quality of one or the other, is an important step in terms of respect for the consumer and the producers and reflects our concern for healthier and more balanced nutrition for more responsible consumers."@en1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples