Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-14-Speech-2-346"
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"en.20020514.15.2-346"2
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".
Mr President, I wish first of all to thank the shadow rapporteurs and others in the informal food safety group in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy for cooperating so well. Naturally, the Commission’s initiative in both reports was also welcome.
I think that the proposal is extremely cautious. There is a sense of ‘pussyfooting’ around the problem. I had expected the Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection to be tougher in this case. First of all, not all forms of salmonella of significance to public health are included. It is strange that, in certain places, only two kinds are included, even though it is precisely these that account for 80% of illnesses among people today. Or, more precisely
account for that figure in the past. What is happening with the remaining 20%? Why not include all illnesses that affect, or are dangerous to, public health when efforts are being made to control salmonella? How can the Commission know what type of salmonella will explode onto the scene tomorrow? Will it be St. Paul, Hadar or some other form?
We have a vast number of invasive forms of salmonella affecting people’s health. I am therefore keen that the wording, 'of significance for public health' should be included, and account taken of all forms of salmonella.
Species of animal are also missing from the Commission’s proposal. I am conscious of the fact that, for safety’s sake, I have included all types of animal, but I shall continue to fight on behalf of intensively reared pigs and veal calves, because we all know that the quantity of antibiotics used is very dangerous. We also know that the feed concerned contains both zoonotic and other bacteria that are wholly resistant to antibiotics.
There are, moreover so many simple and practical circumstances that are of relevance that, even if we can ensure that the breeding animals and stalls are kept clean, that does not help one iota if the food is not clean. We know, for example, that a very great source of infection with
is Brazilian soya. We know the story about salmonella normally being killed off at 67 degrees. For ten years, however, aruba has succeeded in surviving at 68 degrees. We should probably not imagine that we shall one day become completely free from risk or that this battle will have been won once and for all. It is, after all, life with which we are concerned here, life which is in some ways as intelligent as ourselves, even if the intelligence concerned is not perhaps to be found in the same place or does not express itself in the same way.
I would therefore appeal to the House to support my two reports, just as they were adopted by a broad majority in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy.
I shall talk first of all about the monitoring directive. It is necessary to obtain a clear and unambiguous picture of the zoonoses situation in Europe. Of course, we are talking about the food scandals that have affected us, most recently an acrylamide alert in Sweden. We must remember, however, that, even if all these warning reports are serious in themselves, they are in actual fact more serious from a psychological than from a public health point of view.
The big threat for the future is the old familiar one which people have lived with for millions of years and which the developing world still lives with. Even in our own time, the most common causes of mortality among infants are in actual fact infectious illnesses and diarrhoea.
For us in the rich part of the world, it is resistance to antibiotics which will be the big problem. More and more of our simple infections are tending to become serious again. We should have put the brakes on twenty years ago, so it is already late and perhaps even too late, but there is a danger that, if we cannot radically and quickly reduce the number of infections and antibiotic treatments, we shall soon be back to where we were in our great-grandmothers’ time when almost every woman had to give birth to four children if two were to reach adulthood. The problem is greatest for children and young people. I am therefore very grateful that we are now to chart antibiotic resistance to the zoonoses we discover in Europe.
Statistics now indicate that salmonella infection and other animal food-borne infections are tending to decline slowly, while vegetable-borne infection is on the increase. I am therefore very concerned that vegetable food be included in investigations for the purpose of, for example, tracing outbreaks.
The most important thing of all about the monitoring directive is that we should obtain common standards so that the information collected is comparable between the different countries. We must have a standardisation of sampling, reporting and the way in which these matters are dealt with. I should also like to draw attention to the fact that new technology should actually make good reporting simpler and quicker so that we do not have to wait two and a half years to be clear about the situation. Greater speed is often required so that it will be possible to inform authorities, producers and citizens at a relatively early stage. That is probably the most important feature of the monitoring directive.
The control regulation is perhaps more controversial. The Commission’s proposal was very cautious and restrained and seemed to take account of the fact that certain Member States imagine that salmonella is in something like the same category as a mild cold. That is the kind of attitude that exists. There are also Member States affected by salmonella panic of the kind that exists in my own country.
There is nothing strange about such panic. Approximately 50 years ago, we were hit by the world’s biggest salmonella disaster ever, or at least the biggest for which statistics were kept. Subsequently, Sweden began to try to do something about the problem, as naturally happens as a consequence of disasters.
It took our country 25–30 years to put in place a system that worked. Matters have proceeded more quickly for Norway and Finland, which have been able to copy the Swedish model. The Swedish model provides us with experience but is presumably too distinctive and not applicable everywhere. Sweden is a small, sparsely populated and open country, which perhaps made it simpler for us to attend to the problems."@en1
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