EU's Byrne outlines tighter foot-and-mouth control
Date: 13-Sep-02
Country: BELGIUM
Author: Jeremy Smith
Major revisions of rules for staging points where animals rest in transit, individual ear tags for sheep and reductions in travelling time for live animals are expected to form the key elements of draft legislation due to be tabled next month.
Many of the areas which the Commission is keen to revise would appear in proposals to revise current foot-and-mouth laws, which would then be discussed by the EU's 15 member states, Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner David Byrne said.
"There is a lot of work remaining to be done. The Commission proposal for a new directive on foot-and-mouth disease is currently in translation. It is what I might call a blockbuster proposal which runs to over 130 pages," Byrne told members of the European Parliament's temporary committee on foot-and-mouth.
The Commission's proposals follow charges that government incompetence and a refusal to use vaccination exacerbated last year's UK epidemic, which spread to other countries in Europe.
Britain slaughtered and burned millions of animals during its foot-and-mouth crisis, turning much of the countryside into a no-go zone rather than use vaccines.
ANIMAL TRANSPORT
The Commission's plans to revise the live animal transport directive are one of the most controversial areas of legislation awaited by member states and agriculture observers next month.
Details of the proposals remain fiercely guarded although it is known the Commission is keen to cut the permitted number of travelling hours depending on the quality of transport used.
Byrne said the Commission was very advanced in preparing a major strengthening of the directive but had already found major differences in opinion, citing two deadlocked groups of opposing views: producers versus the animal welfare movement, and states that traded in live animals and those that did not.
Earlier, Byrne indicated that the EU might in future have the power to order the vaccination of a country's livestock in order to prevent diseases such as foot-and-mouth from spreading.
Member states that failed to comply could lose the right to compensation for their farmers from EU funds, and also face other possible sanctions - a proposal that is certain to provoke stormy debate in many EU countries.
Byrne's spokeswoman, Beate Gminder, told a briefing that emergency vaccination would be "the front-line option" in future outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in line with medical advice.
A majority of member states would have to endorse any Commission decision to require vaccination, she said, stressing that the country concerned could still refuse to implement it.
EAR TAGS
Another Commission plan was for stricter rules on movements of small ruminant animals, particularly sheep, by introducing individual ear tags similar to the system used for cattle. This, Byrne said, was likely to prove a highly controversial proposal.
"This will be on the basis of ear tags and flock registers. The intention is to move as quickly as possible to an electronic system of identification. However, there are still obstacles to overcome before this can be done on an EU-wide basis," he said.
"Farmers are unhappy with what they consider to be further red tape and bureaucracy," he said. "The Commission view is that...a price has to be paid if reliable identification systems are to be put in place in the event of future outbreaks."
Major changes might also be applied to locations where animals rest while in transit, as they have been traced as sources for the spread of disease.
"The Commission proposal will require much stricter health requirements on animals which pass through such staging points," Byrne said, adding that the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth in the Netherlands could be linked to a staging point in France.