Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-05-14-Speech-2-349"
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"en.20020514.15.2-349"2
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"Mr President, following the demise of Edwina Currie, the British health minister, who in 1988 said that most of the UK's egg production was infected with salmonella, it is a brave British politician who makes a speech on this subject.
Following that bombshell, egg consumption in the UK fell by 60% and the government embarked on what can only be described as knee-jerk reaction, when they slaughtered 2 million chickens. Although some progress has been made in combating salmonella in the UK, there is still much work to be done. There are still 15,000 or 16,000 cases per year of salmonella food poisoning in the UK, half the previous levels.
Of course, this is not just a problem in Europe. In the United States in 1994, there was a case connected with contaminated ice cream where nearly a quarter of a million people became ill. Sweden, as Mrs Paulsen has said, has led the way but there they have looked at, for example, heat treatment of feed rather than just looking at the blunt tool of slaughter of flocks. Of course, we hear stories now of Swedes going to Spain on holiday and falling like flies from salmonella food poisoning because they are not used to the constant exposure.
It is certainly true that Member States need to make progress to establish more effective national control programmes and at the same time, we need to ensure that imported products meet our own high standards. We must also concentrate on where the problem is, and that is poultry, and in particular eggs which are eaten raw.
Pork is less of a problem and, anyway, my grandmother would say that anyone eating raw pork deserves to be ill. Infection in cattle and sheep is negligible so we can continue to eat our rare steak.
On the issue of antibiotic resistance, there is resistance building up. However, we should not rush to ban prophylactic antibiotic use, as we could then see an explosion of disease prompting high levels of the resultant therapeutic use that could exacerbate the situation.
Lastly, on the issue of plant-based infection, maybe that has something to do with the increase in organic food consumption where I understand you are 30 times more likely to get e-coli infection."@en1
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