Following the recent discoveries of the dangers inherent in feedingstuffs, especially in the economically advanced countries of the EU and, in particular, the problem of BSE caused by using animal proteins as feedingstuffs, meat and bonemeal should have been completely banned as a feedingstuff and replaced with vegetable proteins produced in the Community, so that Community farmers would not be dependent on soya from the United States. In other words, the CAP should have been reviewed in its entirety, encompassing both the feedingstuffs sector and the farming sector which produces feedingstuffs. In our view, the quota system should have been reviewed, especially in the Mediterranean countries, and in Greece in particular, where quotas are far below self-sufficiency and potential production levels and where the method of producing animal proteins is far healthier than the method used in the economically advanced countries of the EU, where quotas far exceed requirements, with the result that they export the dangers inherent in their feedingstuffs to all the countries with shortfalls, including Greece. We should also examine the system for pricing and subsidising fodder crops, so as to support fodder legumes, with a view to guaranteeing cheap, top quality vegetable proteins and protecting the environment, given that legumes restore the soil and are ideally suited to crop rotation programmes, especially with the soil and climate in the Mediterranean. Instead of which, the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development has used various tricks, believing that the problem of BSE will be forgotten in time, in an endeavour to restore animal protein in animal feedingstuffs in six months’ time. In other words, it is endeavouring to restore meat and bonemeal which, it has now been proven, is responsible for BSE, disregarding public health in order to serve the interests of the Community feedingstuffs industry. These endeavours are confirmed by decisions on the matter so far and discussions taking place in official circles. The alibi which the Committee is using for these endeavours takes the form of the proposal to cultivate certain land set aside from arable crops with fodder legumes, allegedly in order to increase the production of vegetable proteins; at the same time, however, it bans the production of seed on this land and restricts it solely to hay production, and unsubsidised hay production at that. Under this proposal, little or no vegetable proteins will be produced, even in countries with extensive set aside. For Greece, however, and perhaps for other Mediterranean countries, the proposal is meaningless because they have little or no set aside. The Commission proposal does absolutely nothing to resolve the problem of protein in Community fodder, and, as a result, it deliberately and consciously finds a ‘solution’ either in the Community meat and bonemeal responsible for BSE or in modified soya from the United States, which may well be equally dangerous to public health, as well as making Community livestock farmers dependent on the multinationals which market soya and soya products. Because the Commission proposal does not make use of the productive potential in the Member States in order to resolve the problem of proteins, and feedingstuffs in general, once and for all and in a way which safeguards public health, because the purpose of the proposal is to mislead farmers and consumers, so that the dangerous method of producing proteins for animal feed can continue, and because I have no desire to help, even indirectly, in perpetuating this serious public health problem and deceiving arable and livestock farmers, I shall not vote in favour of the Commission proposal. I believe that my vote will act as an incentive and that the production of healthy and suitable feedingstuffs will become the subject of an objective fight on the part of the people of the Community.

Political group: GUE-NGL