Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-05-21-Speech-3-479"
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"en.20080521.31.3-479"2
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"Mr President, I congratulate the rapporteur, Mr Wojciechowski, on his outstanding report. It really is a very big problem that the animal health system is not functioning properly with regard to third countries. In the WTO we should be endeavouring to ensure that third countries too comply with our high standards of animal health and welfare. This is in the interests of Europe’s consumers and producers.
We must protect the health of European Union consumers from imported goods produced according to lower standards. EU producers meanwhile face higher costs, putting them at an unfair competitive disadvantage. It is therefore especially important that the European Commission’s Food and Veterinary Office, the FVO, should conduct an increasing proportion of its on-site inspections in third countries. In 2008 the figure was only 30%.
Food safety is a priority issue. The food safety regime within the European Union too faces serious problems at present, while the challenges and the risk of epidemics are greater than before. In many places there are not enough suitably qualified veterinarians to monitor compliance with the regulations effectively and regularly enough. The tools at their disposal are outdated, often still based on 19th century systems. In many Member States, professional training and education are inadequate and recent scandals, such as the ‘M.E.G.A. Trade’ scandal in my country, Hungary, also demonstrate that multinationals are not being properly monitored with regard to food safety.
The aforementioned deficits must be remedied. I agree with the Commission’s strategic ideas and fully support the report. Thank you for your attention."@en1
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