Mr President, I will start where my colleague finished. I am not particularly exercised about ferrets one way or the other I have to confess, but I rather like the line Mr Whitehead took: we should look again and maybe ask some of the experts. There are many of us who are not very up-to-date in terms of what can or cannot be done on ferrets in relation to immunity testing. I would not like the job myself. I must confess a conflict of interest at the start. When I return from Brussels or wherever, be it a Thursday evening or Friday morning, the greatest welcome I get is from my collection of dogs – at least in terms of the noise they make and the length of time. Yes, the rest of the family are delighted – a quick 'Hi Mum', – a head goes up and you might get a hug and then back to the TV or whatever they were doing – but 20 minutes later the dogs are still running round in high excitement. So I can really empathise with those who feel passionately about the need to be able to bring animals freely throughout Europe subject to the conditions being laid down today and I welcome the report here before us. The Commission measures proposed to allow for the easier movement of cats and dogs within the EU, and a selection of other animals that are classified as pets as well. However, the Environment Committee did give the ferrets a knock and that is where it stands subject to perhaps investigating what my colleague Mr Whitehead has said. I welcome very much, as others have said, that we can celebrate the success of the anti-rabies vaccination campaign which has allowed us to get to the point we are at today and which allowed initially the UK, Ireland and Sweden to change their quarantine system, thereby giving us the template that the Commission now proposes to extend effectively throughout the EU. We must be on guard though about bringing pet animals in from third countries, because any cases of rabies which are found in the EU at the moment come from third countries where rabies is still endemic. Let us be very careful about border controls in relation to importing again this horrible disease particularly to countries that are now rabies-free. As part of the measures proposed by the Commission, animals will have to be identified by electronic transponder or tattoo, and provide evidence that they have been vaccinated and that their immunity has been checked more than six months prior to travel. I have problems with any continuation of the use of tattoos, and the Environment Committee is of the same view. I also have problems with ad lib use of transponders rather than standardisation of the transponder and this view is also supported by the Federation of Veterinarians of Europe, the FVE. They feel very strongly that only a standard microchip should be used. Remember it is 8 years down the line. We have plenty of time to sort this out and get things in order. The report before us is based on a Scientific Veterinary Committee report written in September 1977. This was before the agreed ISO standards 11784 and 11785 came into being, and therefore, before there was true compatibility between products from different manufacturers. Since the introduction of standards which can be specified in legislation, as done in the UK pet statute, all ISO standard readers can read all ISO standard microchips. Initially, we also thought that microchip numbers could be changed. It has never been demonstrated that this can be achieved and technical advice from engineers involved in microchip design and manufacture indicates that it will never be easy or even possible to achieve. We must bear in mind that more modern advanced microchips are being designed with authentication programmes which will be even harder to change fraudulently. However, the value of the benefit in changing a microchip identification number in a pet animal is unlikely to ever be so great as to warrant the effort and the cost involved. Tattoos, however, are much less satisfactory. They are difficult to read in small species such as the cat, they are difficult to read in breeds where the ears are cropped, they are difficult for regulatory officers to read in aggressive or apprehensive individuals and they are relatively easy to erase and to change fraudulently. I will therefore be supporting very strongly Amendment Nos 6 and 7, even though the need to retrieve the name and address of the owner off the microchip is in some doubt, but I go for a standardisation of the chip, and only the chip not the tattoo.

Political group: PPE-DE