Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-23-Speech-3-381"
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"en.20080423.25.3-381"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, yesterday in this House we spoke about the rise in food prices and the effects of that in the European Union and for developing countries. Now we are here again this evening, talking about genetically modified animal feed. It might have been an idea to combine the two debates. After all, this somewhat technical subject of animal feed of course fits in with the wider debate on food safety and rising food prices. How sensible is it actually to destroy or reject whole shiploads of animal feed because they unintentionally contain traces, very small quantities, of genetically modified products? That does not seem very sensible to me, either from the point of view of the food safety I mentioned, or in the light of rising prices.
Because animal feed prices have indeed gone up considerably recently and they will do so even more if we continue to take that attitude. Many producers are seeing their costs increase as a result and I think it cannot do any harm to emphasise once again that the rising prices we keep talking about do not necessarily mean that farmers are also earning more. In fact it has already been said that, in the pigmeat sector for example, the costs of feed are going up and the margins are actually only smaller.
How can we get out of this deadlock now? Not by suddenly dealing carelessly with approval procedures. No, that is certainly not the way, but in my opinion there is a problem in two areas, and we have to find a solution. Firstly, as Mr Stevenson said earlier, it takes much longer in the European Union for a GMO to be approved: two and a half years for us, barely a year in the United States. I have taken note of what the Commission says about making EFSA more efficient, but of course that is not the whole problem. The problem also lies in the to-ing and fro-ing in the Council committees, which are then unable to achieve either a qualified majority for approval or a qualified majority against approval, and then finally, after a long tussle, the decision is passed to the Commission. So that is also part of the problem, and that procedure needs to be quicker. It is certainly not an argument for automatic approval of products, but I do think people have the right to know more quickly whether or not a product can be approved for the European market.
Secondly, we need to find a solution to the unintentional presence of genetically modified traces in animal feed, for instance through a threshold value, certainly in the case of GMOs that have already been approved by EFSA, and certainly when you consider that chops from pigs that have eaten feed outside the European Union are regularly available in our shops. Talk about unfair competition! I think it is a pity I have not heard anything from the Commission about threshold values. It refers to existing legislation. Let us be honest, though, with the labelling we are using a threshold value, so I think it is possible.
In short, producers and consumers must not become the victims of the indecision on the part of the Council committees. It is time now to offer clarity and speed."@en1
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