Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-06-18-Speech-1-117"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20070618.15.1-117"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"Mr President, as Mr Helmer has pointed out, and just to clarify for the House, the UK Conservatives are indeed supporting Mr Schnellhardt’s amendment on vodka. The issue which our Scandinavian and Polish colleagues appear to be banking on now is the old equality-with-whisky argument.
I have heard people in the House this evening saying that that we could possibly have a situation where whisky is going to be made out of grapes. Well I have to say that these arguments are completely bogus. We are trying to define these products for the benefit of consumers to ensure that what is in the bottle conforms to their expectations of what a whisky or a vodka should be. As distillers will tell you, if you distil at a lower alcoholic strength, more taste comes over the still. Spirits like whisky are distilled at a low strength and
their taste from the raw materials. Other spirits like vodka are distilled at a high strength and may then even be filtered through charcoal to
the taste of the raw materials.
Our Nordic colleagues and their allies are trying to have it both ways. They are asking us to define a product not by reference to its characteristics or by reference to what the consumers expect, but by reference to the raw materials that their producers currently use. It is interesting that they have not sought to include sulphite waste, which was the predominant raw material in Sweden in the 1920s, nor apples, nor coal and yellow turnips, which have all been used in Poland in the past. Parliament should not be in the business of defining products so as to exclude producers and distort competition. We should be protecting the consumer, and it is for that reason that we support the approach being taken by Dr Schnellhardt, which avoids artificial restrictions on production while ensuring that consumers are adequately informed."@en1
|
| lpv:spokenAs | |
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata |
"derive"1
"remove"1
|
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples