Mr President, the rapporteur said in his introduction that crises have a cleansing effect. I listened to him and hope that what he said is right. He is evidently more optimistic than I am. I do not really think that crises have a purifying effect. If crises were to have a purifying effect, then Agriculture Ministers would have rather more understanding than they evidently do. Once again we are sitting and standing in this Parliament at a time when we are, for the most part, agreed among ourselves and with the Commission, whilst the person with whom we do not agree, namely the Council representative, is absent. Such is life! It would be nice if he could be made aware of this, but that is probably unlikely. The rapporteur, and also Mrs Klaß, who has just spoken, have pointed out that Parliament allowed the Commission proposal to pass through first reading unamended. This means that the institutions who are not always in agreement were, on this occasion, agreed. And what has the Council learnt from this? It was the Council (and I say this again in all clarity, drawing in part on my own experiences of recent years) which basically got us into the BSE scandal. It was not this Parliament, and only to a very minor extent the Commission. It was the Council of Ministers who tried repeatedly to keep things under wraps. So what has it learnt from the BSE crisis? Has it learnt that it is better to be transparent? Has it learnt that it is better to permit safeguard options and safeguard clauses? Has it learnt that rapid action is needed? It has learnt none of these things! It has submitted to us a common position in which the option to have a safeguard clause will actually be taken away from the Commission. It will not have the option to get involved quickly and unbureaucratically on the basis of safeguard clauses. It will also not have the option to make unannounced on-the-spot inspections. It will not be in a position to act quickly. And it will also not need to inform the European Parliament, nor will it need to publish any inspection reports lest, heaven forbid, the public finds out something which worries it. It is better to leave things in the hands of the Agriculture Ministers. I can see the Council representative writing busily and I hope that this will also be passed on to the Presidency and the other members of the Council of Agriculture Ministers. I am sorry if I am not being very amiable at the moment, and particularly with my cold I would much rather be mellow, but the fact is I am not. I consider this common position to be scandalous! It is we who have worked for untainted animal feedingstuffs in recent years, we who established that we got BSE because animal feedingstuffs were mixed in a way in which they should never have been mixed, we who established that there just happens to be dioxin in the peel of oranges and other fruits and that we have it in our animal feed, we who established that sewage sludge has no place in animal feedingstuffs, we who established that hormones should not accelerate growth and do not belong in animal feedingstuffs, we who established that there is no place for antibiotics, nor cough medicines for calves – we have established all these things; my goodness, I am making more agricultural policy, and I come from the constituency of Berlin, which is a purely urban constituency, than my voters can imagine, because it is consumer protection policy – and if we know all of this, then what is the Council learning from it? Yet again we are providing an example here right across all the groups, the rapporteur, Mrs Klaß, who has just spoken for her group, and me for my group, of how the institutions work closely together. We support, Mr Byrne, the fact that you will have the opportunities which you need in the Commission in Brussels, for example via the Food and Veterinary Office in Dublin, that will enable you to carry out rapid inspections and take safeguard measures, so that we are actually able to say to consumers that we genuinely care about safe food, and safe feedingstuffs and animal nutrition inspections are the first step in all this. I thank you for the fact that you will obviously now be able to table a motion for the primary inspection of European Union products, not just, as in this instance, products from third countries. It only makes sense if we prevent this in unison and only then, Commissioner, does the White Paper on food safety, which you have presented, also make sense. I therefore hope that, tomorrow, we will actually slap the Council of Ministers in the face by unanimously affirming the rapporteur’s four amendments.

Political group: PSE