Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-04-23-Speech-3-382"
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"en.20080423.25.3-382"2
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"Madam President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as its title suggests, this question deals with the economic consequences of the GMO authorisation procedure.
I would therefore like to ask the Commissioner whether the Commission has requested any studies on the causes of the rise in the price of animal feed and I would like to know, too, what proportion of the feedingstuffs imported in recent years has contained traces of GMOs not authorised in Europe and where these products came from. That would be useful in assessing the scope of these incidents.
Unlike Mrs De Lange who has just spoken, I refute the causal link drawn between the principle of zero tolerance of GMOs and the considerable increase in the price of feed. The two should not be lumped together since we know very well that this increase is due to the combination of several factors, which I will not go into here, but primarily to stock market speculation on future agricultural markets. Moreover, this increase affects all countries, including those with very flexible legislation on GMOs.
Nevertheless, it is true that European livestock farmers are in great difficulty and the main reason for this is the fact that the EU is highly dependent on feed imports. My main question is thus as follows: why are we so dependent and how should we respond? I want to ask the Commission if it has carried out an analysis of the economic consequences of the Blair House Agreement, for which the European Union gave up its own production of animal feed.
In order to reduce this dependency, there are two options, in my opinion. The first is to do everything we can to save – and I mean save – the last European fodder and protein crops and to encourage restructuring, avoiding, for example, the complete decoupling of aid during the CAP Health Check, particularly as these crops offer indisputable environmental qualities for crop rotation and, consequently, for the soil.
On the other hand, the Commission must look into diversifying our source of supply. In December 2007 I took part in a conference organised by the GM-Free Network, which demonstrated that supplies of non-GMO feed do exist and that contacts need to be established between producers and importers.
I hope that everyone is aware that consumers have a right..."@en1
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