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ENSITTING OF TUESDAY, 17 DECEMBER 2002
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ENIN THE CHAIR: MR IMBENI
Vice-President
(The sitting was opened at 9 a.m.)[1]<BRK>
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ENSauquillo Pérez del Arco (PSE). – (ES) Mr President, I would like to inform you that last week, the intergroup for friendship and solidarity with the Cuban people visited Cuba, and the visit was very positive for relations between this Parliament and Cuba, as well as between the European Union and Cuba.
This intergroup, made up of seven Members of Parliament, four from the Group of the European Socialist Party, two from the GUE/NGL Group and one from the ELDR Group, had a mandate from President Cox to try to secure Oswaldo Payá's exit from Cuba and thereby present him with the award in one hour’s time.
I would like to say to you that, as I said to Mr Cox’s secretary on the telephone, on returning from Cuba on Saturday at 1p.m., Mrs Isabel Allende, Cuban Ambassador in Spain, was waiting for us; the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Felipe Roque, called us personally to say that, thanks to the efforts of the intergroup, they would allow Mr Payá to leave, in view of the friendly relations they have and wish to have with Parliament.
As you know, the attempts by the Council had not been successful, and nor had those of the President of the Christian Democrat and People’s Parties International. I would therefore like you to personally communicate to Mr Cox that our efforts yielded positive results. <BRK>
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ENPresident. – I will certainly do that, Mrs Sauquillo. <BRK>
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ENFoot and mouth disease: lessons to be learned and proposals for the future
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ENPresident. – The next item is the report (A5-0405/2002) by Mr Kreissl-Dörfler, on behalf of the Temporary Committee on Foot and Mouth Disease, on measures to control Foot and Mouth Disease in the European Union in 2001 and future measures to prevent and control animal diseases in the European Union [2002/2153(INI)]. <BRK>
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ENKreissl-Dörfler (PSE), rapporteur. – (DE) MrPresident, Commissioner Byrne, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start with very warm thanks to all the colleagues who did serious work in the committee and on the report. I am especially grateful to our chairman, Mrs Redondo, to the secretariat, which did excellent work, to the scientific service, and to the Commission.
February 2001 saw what was no doubt the most serious outbreak of foot and mouth disease Europe had ever known. It affected Ireland, the Netherlands, France and, in particular, Great Britain. In Great Britain alone, where the epidemic indeed broke out, official estimates state that 6.5 million animals were killed in the course of combating it. Other sources mention up to 10 million. The Netherlands lost 285 000 animals and France, where there were four outbreaks, 65 000 of them. The consequences were catastrophic for everyone concerned. It makes no sense for any future policy on epidemics to be based solely on the slaughter of animals as a means of eradicating the virus, and no such approach will any longer be tolerated by the people of the EU.
At the beginning of this year, our Parliament set up a temporary committee not, as some Members unfortunately persist in believing, a committee of inquiry which had the aim of helping to create an improved policy that would work not only at EU level. One of our tasks was to use numerous public hearings and on-site visits to analyse the events in the Member States affected, to evaluate them fairly and take what we thereby learned as a means of drawing relevant conclusions as regards a Europe-wide policy on foot and mouth disease. This also means that we have no judicial function, nor are we able to resolve scientific disputes. In our report, we cannot pass judgments, let alone condemn anyone in advance for things we cannot prove anyway. This was not within our remit and we were not equipped for that purpose. Ladies and gentlemen, I am quite sure that any other government in the EU would have had similar problems to grapple with had it faced a comparable scenario, with between 50 and 70 simultaneous outbreaks across the whole country, and with sheep being affected as well.
We now know that, after economic and trade policy considerations led to vaccination being stopped in the EU in 1992, the emergency plans that have been elaborated have been defective, being designed for only a few outbreaks rather than for a worst-case scenario of this kind. The fact that the International Office of Epizootics, the OIE, would only restore the designation of ‘FMD-free without vaccination’ twelve months after the last vaccination meant that the watchword was ‘kill rather than inoculate, or just inoculate in order to cull afterwards’. That this has been cut to six months since May this year represents a massive step forward. We advocate three months.
I want now to list some of our most important demands. Not only must future policy include effective emergency plans for the combating of epidemics, but all the Member States must check how their communications networks and decision-making structures would perform in an emergency, and run cross-border emergency exercises in real time. It is also essential that plans should take far greater account than hitherto of the psychosocial effects of any policy on the farmers affected by the epidemic and on all those banned from moving animals. Greater attention must be given to bio-safety. Every single farmer must be careful about what he feeds to his animals, from whom he buys them, and how quickly he brings them and his old stock together. For it was a farmer's irresponsible working practices that caused the epidemic to break out in Great Britain. There must be further improvements to the animals' traceability and therefore also to the way they are identified. It is also important to do everything possible to prevent illegal imports of animal products from countries where foot and mouth disease is endemic. The Commission has already decided that, for example, travellers from these countries may no longer bring products of this sort into the EU. But our most important demand in terms of action against future epidemics is that emergency vaccination should be regarded as the recourse of first choice, the object being to allow the animals to live on and assess products from them on a regional basis. This would be a crucial improvement on what was done in the past, as there continues to be no dispute about the absolute absence of any health risk to humans from the meat of inoculated animals and from other products derived from them. This, then, is an area in which there is an urgent need for people to be informed.
There is, though, one thing that I want to make clear. Infected stocks will always be slaughtered, as will any animals put at risk by contact with them. Economic considerations and the demands of the internal market, among other things, mean that there will be no early return to general vaccination, nor has it been called for in the hearings to date by any reputable expert. Do not, then, raise people's hopes too high. To do so would indeed be irresponsible.
Nevertheless, there needs to be further research towards finding an appropriate and durable marker vaccine capable of covering all serotypes and enabling an undoubted distinction to be drawn between inoculated and infected animals. I might mention that, in Germany until 1990, only cattle were inoculated, to the exclusion of all other animals.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am convinced that a policy such as that which we are proposing will put an end to images the like of which were broadcast around the globe last year.
Let me just say something about the voting. Vote for my amendments and for those tabled by the Socialist Group! They will do away with a whole array of accusations that have been levelled at the British Government, charges that we as a parliament – or so I personally understand parliamentary practice – are not entitled to bring in this way and are thus not justified. Being a politician myself, I can quite understand that they were made in an excess of political enthusiasm, but please do your infighting at home. For that purpose, the European Parliament is the least suitable of all platforms. And one more thing: there are fourteen Member States in the European Union besides Great Britain. It is important, ladies and gentlemen, that not only the British Government, but also the Council, the Commission, the candidate countries, the OIE and other states, such as, for example, the USA, Australia, Argentina and South Africa should be able to take our report seriously. The combating of epidemics calls for a worldwide strategy, as foot and mouth disease is an international disease and not a British one. It is my view that we, representing the peoples of the fifteen Member States, have achieved outstanding success in discussing this problem area as it deserves to be discussed, and in coming up with final conclusions that point the way ahead. What is, unfortunately, certain is that there will certainly be another outbreak of foot and mouth disease. The question is only that of where and when it will occur and with what intensity. Against that, we must be armed.
(Applause)<BRK>
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ENByrne,Commission. – Mr President, I am grateful to Parliament, and in particular the Temporary Committee on Foot and Mouth Disease, for its hard work in responding to the lessons to be learned from the 2001 foot and mouth epidemic. In particular I wish to thank Mrs Redondo Jiménez for her effective and objective chairing of the committee, the rapporteur, Mr Kreissl-Dörfler, for a balanced, straightforward and future-oriented report, and the secretariat of the committee.
My services and I followed your work very closely. We have attended all your meetings, hearings, missions and discussions and have given evidence and support whenever required. I am confident that you will find that the views of Parliament are strongly reflected in the Commission's policy response to foot and mouth disease.
I will now turn to the key conclusions and recommendations in your report. First, the international dimension of Community policy on FMD; secondly, the single market issues that arise and, thirdly, control measures.
On the international dimension, I note the serious concern that poor controls on imports from third countries may have led to last year's outbreak and the calls for these controls to be strengthened. I wish to make a very clear distinction between illegal introduction and legal imports. Illegal actions are obviously, by their nature, very difficult to eliminate. The Commission has, however, made proposals within the framework of the hygiene package to withdraw exemptions from the strict animal health conditions and control procedures for imports. We have also adopted a decision to introduce tougher rules on the personal import of meat and milk products by travellers arriving in the EU from the majority of third countries. Our awareness campaign in relation to this measure will begin on 1 January 2003.
As for control on legal imports, the evidence indicates that Community import conditions and controls at external borders have been effective. Prior to last year's outbreak, the EU was broadly FMD-free for almost a decade. During that time hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fresh-meat products were safely imported. These imports included large quantities from disease-free regions in South America, where FMD is endemic and vaccination is practised. The outbreak last year could not have originated in South America as the O1 Pan-Asia strain of the virus is unknown in that continent.
Calls for a ban on such imports must be viewed in this light, yet such calls continue to be made. I find it difficult not to conclude that protectionist interests are involved here and may lie behind these demands.
Certainly, we must continue to insist on strict controls. We must equally reject pressures to turn them into thinly – or not so thinly – disguised barriers to trade. We must continue to pursue the eradication of FMD on an international level. To this end, we collaborate closely with international organisations, such as the FAO and the OIE, and will continue to do so.
I was deeply concerned to read some of the proposed modifications to the report, which suggested measures that would dismantle the European single market. I therefore congratulate the committee on rejecting most of these suggestions and on its pro-single-market stance.
As you are aware, most of our animal health legislation is in the form of directives. This approach provides sufficient flexibility for Member States to implement harmonised measures. However, shortcomings in implementation have certainly contributed to the magnitude of the 2001 FMD epidemic. The Commission has devoted much energy towards improving legislation where necessary and to reinforcing official controls in the Community. One of the key features of the UK epidemic was the huge number of frequently unrecorded movements of animals. The Commission has submitted a proposal to reinforce controls on the movement of animals. This proposal in particular introduced for sheep – as regards breeding and production – a mandatory residence of 30 days prior to despatch to another Member State. It also limits the number of assembly operations in assembly centres, approved under more stringent animal health requirements. This has attracted the support of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy and of Parliament.
The Commission has proposed to the Council a major revision of the animal health and sanitary conditions applying to staging points where animals are rested for welfare reasons whilst in transit. The outbreak of FMD in the Netherlands can be directly linked to such a staging point, in France. Pending the outcome of the technical working groups in the Council, the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health unanimously supported a Commission proposal to extend the strict measures adopted during the FMD crisis until the middle of next year.
Movement controls can only be truly effective if there are reliable identification systems in place. It is clear that the major weakness in this respect is in relation to sheep.
The current provisions and, in particular, their implementation by Member States have proved to be insufficient to enable the veterinary authorities to trace animals. The Commission is making a new proposal for a regulation to require individual identification of sheep, with the option of future electronic identification. I hope the European Parliament will also support this proposal.
I should also mention another major development, the mid-term review of the common agricultural policy. The outcome of the review will have a decisive influence on the future direction of agricultural production in the EU. This in turn cannot be divorced from the health and welfare of animals.
One of the features of the mid-term review is the heavier emphasis on quality rather than quantity. I welcome this trend from a consumer perspective. But it should also assist from the perspective of disease avoidance and control.
Regarding vaccination, the huge numbers of animals slaughtered and destroyed during the outbreak last year had a profound impact on public opinion. We cannot ignore this. In fact, we have fully to take into account the deeply held views of our citizens. Our approach to FMD has to adapt accordingly. Clearly, the rapid slaughter and disposal of infected or susceptible animals must be an important element in our disease control strategy. Emergency vaccination must also play a central role, as appropriate to the circumstances.
There have been deep misunderstandings over the role of vaccination and the Commission's own position on this issue. I do not propose to repeat today what I have already said on this matter. My remarks now are therefore confined to future policy.
The Commission remains of the view that prophylactic vaccination of the entire susceptible livestock population or even particular species is not advisable for sound scientific, technical and economic reasons. The situation in the EU cannot be compared with the endemic FMD situation in South America or elsewhere. FMD is not endemic in the EU, and prophylactic vaccination is not appropriate in the EU. The Commission takes the view that emergency vaccination should, however, be moved to the forefront of the response mechanism in the event of future outbreaks.
The means are now available to detect infection in a vaccinated population and the Commission – now supported by the OIE – actively pursues further improvement of these tests. The forthcoming Commission proposal for a Council directive on FMD will reflect this position on emergency vaccination in line with the recent modifications made to the FMD chapter in the animal health code. But we must not be under any illusions: vaccination is not a miracle cure to solve all our problems. While it must play a much more important future role, it cannot serve as an excuse to weaken our efforts to keep FMD out of the EU, nor can it fully obviate the need for difficult measures in the event of future outbreaks.