Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-02-04-Speech-3-382"
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"en.20090204.20.3-382"2
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"Madam President, one source of human exposure to PCBs is through the food chain, as the Commissioner says. However, open fires and cigarette smoke are far greater sources to a far greater number of people. Let us be proportional and let us keep the hysteria out of this debate, and more light and less heat on it.
Minimum requirements for feed hygiene are indeed very important and must be rigorously enforced, but they must also be accompanied by full identification and traceability for all meat products – not just beef but also poultry, pigmeat and sheepmeat. I have put down amendments to current legislation to that effect, and we will be discussing these in this House shortly.
The pig feed concerned was indeed contaminated by breadcrumbs because, inadvertently, Millstream Recycling used fuel to dry the breadcrumbs after buying this in good faith from a company it had dealt with for years and with which it had had no previous problems. There is an ongoing police investigation and the company concerned is cooperating fully with them.
I would like to refute completely Mr Allister’s claim that the company showed wanton disregard. That will be proven not to be the case, so let us be careful what we say here.
The biggest problem was that we had to have 100% withdrawal of all pigmeat products, and their destruction, albeit only in the short term. The livelihoods of many Irish farmers, and indeed the reputation of Irish food products abroad suffered because we had to have such a disproportionate response, when only six to seven per cent of our pig farms were contaminated, since the Irish system of identification and traceability failed at the point of the slaughter-house. All pigs are supposed to be eartagged in Ireland, or slap marked, but somehow, at the slaughter-house level, we could not differentiate those pigs that had had the contaminated feed from the vast majority of other pigs that had not.
We need to look at that issue. The Commission needs to look at the whole role of identification and traceability, and above all let us wait for the police investigation, which I think will surprise people.
The companies concerned are extremely sorry, and have said so publicly, for the damage caused to the food chain and Ireland’s reputation, and indeed for the economic damage caused to the many farmers who have purchased their excellent feed products up to this point. They are now back in business and again producing, I might say, an excellent feed ration for farmers to mix.
This has been an appalling episode. No one would have wished it to happen."@en1
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