Mr President, there have been two disasters in British agriculture in recent years. These are BSE and foot-and-mouth disease, which is still raging in my region. Both have had a devastating effect on individual farmers and the industry as a whole. Public confidence has been destroyed. Our markets have been destabilised and the taxpayer has had to fork out billions to compensate farmers for infected and suspected animals. Many have seen generations of work literally go up in smoke on the funeral pyres, which are still burning. Most disturbing of all, it is a fact that because of BSE people have died, not the large numbers forecast by some scientists, but even the death of one young person is one too many for a family. We still do not know the final death toll of variant CJD. These two epidemics have one thing in common: they can both be directly linked to feeding animal waste back to animals. There is a debate as to how the BSE epidemic started. The latest theory is that it came from deer; but it could have been a mutation or it could have been around for years. The fact is that it was multiplied by the recycling of waste into meat and bone meal. Our initial reaction in the United Kingdom was to introduce a ruminant ban on meat and bone meal. That did not work because of cross-contamination. Feed was contaminated in the mills, in the transport system or on farms containing different classes of livestock. So in the UK we opted for a complete ban. Mrs Paulsen wants to fine-tune the partial ban to include the non-cannibalistic reintroduction of meat and bone meal from category 3 material, that is, material which is suitable for human consumption. She wants to feed chickens to pigs and pigs to chickens. I know that chickens are omnivores but I am sure that they do not naturally live on pork. If the rules were obeyed we would have no problem. My worry is about cross-contamination. We have already had specified risk material found on beef carcases imported into the UK on 15 occasions since January: beef from the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Italy – and Germany, which accounted for seven of the cases. If we cannot get it right for the beef for human consumption, if we cannot get it right in Germany, which has one of the best records in the EU, how can we expect that the waste will be correctly segregated in Greece or Italy or Spain? We should therefore keep to the ban on meat and bone meal. Amendment No 100 facilitates this continued ban. The same applies to foot-and-mouth. We had an epidemic in the UK in 1967 that was linked to the feeding of swill. We introduced strict controls. Those strict controls have not been implemented correctly on every farm, otherwise we would not have the massive epidemic that we have at the moment. It is important that catering waste is included in these proposals. I should like to pay tribute to Mrs Paulsen on the inclusive way that she has approached the other groups on this issue and in particular the practical improvements that have been suggested. They include those on waste incineration, allowing small-farm incinerators to continue; on allowing burial on farm in remote areas; on the exemption of manure produced on farms; on the uses of meat and bone meal as fertilizers, given the safeguards that exist; also, on the alternatives to rendering, such as alkaline hydrolysis. We cannot lower our guard, because by recycling animal by-products as feed we risk also recycling the pathogens that cause BSE, foot-and-mouth and other diseases. The economic advantages of doing this pale into insignificance compared with the devastation that has been the direct result of this risky practice.

Political group: PPE-DE