Mr President, I wish to begin by thanking the rapporteur, Mr Kreissl-Dörfler, for his excellent report. This is the second report. First of all there was his report on behalf of the temporary committee and now there is the report on the Commission's legislation. I would also like to thank Members of Parliament for setting up the temporary committee. Commissioner Byrne has listened to the temporary committee and has come forward with some good proposals. I would also thank him for banning personal imports of meat and dairy products into the EU. I just wish that Member States will now enforce that regulation better. We must learn the lessons from this terrible blight to our countryside, farmers and the rural population. Let us not begin to rewrite history and change what we learnt the hard way, nor alter our views. The views of the European inquiry were clear about how a future outbreak should be handled. The EU committee did more to raise the profile of the EU and put a proactive and positive impression forward of what Brussels was attempting to do, than anything else I have witnessed while I have been a Member of this Parliament. We showed that we were listening and that we would take action over their concerns. We spoke to farmers, the tourism industry, people and rural businesses. Let us be clear about what a future strategy must contain. We must have proper checks on the readiness and the value of our contingency plan. Contingency plans must be checked and re-checked, rehearsed and re-examined so that we are not in the unprepared state we were in at the last outbreak. We must have the resources, knowledge and personnel to react quickly. We must use vaccination as a first method of dealing with an outbreak, at the same time, in conjunction with and alongside slaughter. We must not rule out the use of slaughter. There are rumours circulating that the Council is backing away from the use of vaccination, downgrading it on the scale of its importance. Vaccination is not the only tool in our armoury, but it must be fully and effectively used from the beginning of any outbreak. We also need to reassure the consumer about vaccinated meat products and develop and research more new vaccines. We must never again see the mass slaughter of ten million animals - our citizens will not accept it. Any future outbreak must allow vaccinated animals to remain in the food chain to prevent such a terrible waste of resources. We must never again allow political interference to dictate how we attack an outbreak. We must never see the funeral pyres which remain so vivid in the memories of all who witnessed them both in person and on our TV screens. Finally, we must not become complacent. There is no doubt that whilst the Commission has tightened up on personal imports, which I welcome, we are still wide open to the disease entering the EU. My own government is taking a reckless approach to it. After an outbreak that brought our rural communities to their knees, we only have four sniffer dogs to try and prevent contaminated meat entering the country. This is folly and, say what you will, it is simply unacceptable. We must have a concerted, organised and united approach to prevent illegal imports. We, as governments across the EU, must put in place the appropriate resources to do the job: manpower, money and, dare I say it, sniffer dogs. Finally, we must fight the disease in conjunction with the farming communities, not in spite of them. We cannot ride roughshod over them as we did in 2001. We have to gain their trust, show our commitment, and then we will be able to keep the terrible disease out of the EU.

Political group: PPE-DE