Mr President, my group welcomed the report by Mr Papayannakis and salutes him for his persistence. I say that because he comes from a small political group – and it is often hard to make headway here – and he comes from one of the southern Member States, which will in some ways have to make sacrifices and introduce regulations to bring about effective, proper beef labelling throughout the Community. He has also had to face the obfuscation and delays brought about by the Council. The fact that we have had to wait two years for this proposal to become a practical reality is a poor comment on the urgency with which they regard it, although the situation was plainly critical from the time of the outbreak of the BSE crisis onwards. However, we are not here today for recriminations but for looking ahead. This is our chance to put right this sorry process of delay. Parliament has the opportunity, if it is willing to grasp it, to set a realistic timetable for the two-tier implementation of a comprehensive process of labelling for beef and for beef products. In the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy, we supported most of the amendments from the rapporteur and others and we do so again today. We do that on the basis that the key proposal plainly has to be the issue of timing. Some of the versions of this report in themselves have been contradictory in the dates that they gave. We are now talking about implementation of the first stage in September 2000 and the second stage in September 2001. I was glad to hear the representative of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development say that they would settle for the four-month advance that would involve coming forward from January 2002. We believe that this is necessary because we should now get the whole European Union on the move. That is why we want the second stage as set out in Article 13(5) to be distinct and a commensurate advance. Why do we want that? There are some here – certainly some from Member States that have very effective traceability and labelling possibilities already – who would like to do the whole thing at once. They would be able to say to others: look – you cannot do it, you are at fault. Our job is to bring all 15 Member States together so that the process of traceability throughout the whole of the food chain, from the birth of the animal to its slaughter and disposal, would be universally applied throughout the European Union. We say to those who are resistant to this: please remember that it is necessary to bring everybody on board. What everybody wants – whether they are farmers, citizens or consumers in the United Kingdom or anywhere else in the Union – is to feel that they have equal confidence, wherever they are, in the safety of the product that they are consuming. We have struck out the second subparagraph of Article 13(5) and all other amendments which follow the same line of allowing imprecise mixed origins or an indication such as 'EU origin'. One day 'EU origin' may be assurance enough but it is not at this moment. We need to know from which state a product has arrived. I know that there are people in the Netherlands who disagree with that and I would be interested to know why. I cannot see that 'EU origin' is currently sufficient in the way of labelling and we are opposed to that proposal. We are also opposed to the derogation for minced beef, which might apply to something like 30% of the beef output, which ought to be open to labelling. Minced beef is as much, if not more, at risk as any other form of beef since it frequently comes from a variety of sources. It is the case in my country that we have seen minced beef and lamb and other meats mixed up together. We need traceability and labelling there as much as anywhere else. We agree with the rapporteur’s intention to stiffen and speed up the compliance provisions in Amendments Nos 42 and 43. We also agree that supplementary information should and can be provided for those Member States that need it and for those special regions which have important information to communicate. My last point is to end where I began. My country, Mr President, and yours – if I can call Scotland my country too, as I certainly would – have suffered the horrors of BSE. We know we bore a large part of the responsibility for it. It was incumbent upon us to make special provisions by way of food safety as a result. After our years of effort to that end, we can now justifiably say to the Community as a whole that what we want for ourselves we want for everyone else as well.

Political group: PSE