Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-12-16-Speech-4-078"
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"en.20101216.4.4-078"2
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"Mr President, the Commission has created a huge crisis in the egg industry. Like it or not, 100 million birds will still be in cages on D-day – or should I say E-day? There is neither the cash nor the logistics to prevent this.
Insisting on the ruthless enforcement of its rules in a year’s time from the comfort of an armchair may give the speaker a great feeling of satisfaction, but it could seriously jeopardise the long-term health of the British egg sector.
Let us look at the practical implications. How do you remove and dispose of 100 million hens in 24 hours? Or, how do you safely smash and dispose of 83 million eggs every day? On the assumption that you somehow succeed in either of these, where will consumers turn for their 83 million daily eggs? To Ukraine, to India, to Argentina, to Brazil, where all the eggs will have been laid in battery cages. Do any of these countries have a reputation for high welfare standards?
Once this trade starts, it will expand very rapidly by virtue of its competitive advantage. It will be very difficult to stop. It will completely undermine the efforts of colony egg producers in the UK. In effect, we will export a large slice of our industry which has just made massive investments to stay compliant with EU rules.
I believe that an intra-Community trading ban is a complete non-starter. Not only will it be impossible to police across open borders, but it could be challenged by the WTO. So the least bad solution – and I say ‘least bad’ – is to allow temporary derogations to non-compliant producers with conditions attached.
There are some naked images I enjoy looking at, but I do not enjoy the visual image of lorry-loads of naked, unstamped eggs leaving foreign battery cage units en route to the UK in 2012. Unstamped eggs are a gift to a fraudulent trader. We have learnt this the hard way in the UK.
Our UK solution is to mechanically stamp eggs with the code numbers that represent their method of production at the laying farm itself. This operation is proceeding on my own farm at this very moment, and the machinery is reliable. The Commission say it is far too difficult for them to organise the stamping of a special code on non-compliant eggs, despite its obvious necessity. Yes, this is, of course, the same Commission that is forcing UK sheep farmers to unnecessarily identify sheep individually with unreliable electronic equipment. What a glaring inconsistency.
The ‘least bad’ solution – and I use that expression again – is for the EU to insist that non-compliant Member States spend their regional funds on stamping machines and also to pay for an inspectorate whose staff are nationals of compliant Member States. This inspectorate will also visit packing stations and build up a database of the processors who use these battery cage eggs in their products.
Most UK retailers are keen to avoid trading in battery caged eggs after the deadline, but they can only succeed in this if these eggs are properly identified."@en1
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