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Brussels, 10 july 1996
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE)
Euro Coop calls for priority to consumer interest and public health
- The Council and the Commission of the European Union have reaffirmed on several occasions their intention to restore consumer confidence in beef. EURO COOP intends to give its support to any measures which prioritise consumers interests and assure of a high level of public health protection.
BSE is a question of public health. EURO COOP believes that as long as we do not have definitive scientific results the precautionary principle should apply.
- Priority must be given to addressing the underlying causes of the problem. EURO COOP calls on the governments concerned and the European institutions to adopt and enforce strictly the measures required to eradicate BSE and to prevent its reappearance in the European herds. EURO COOP wishes to emphasise underlines the need to ensure a stricter enforcement of the laws and reinforce action for non-compliance.
- As always, consumers should be given correct and complete information to allow them to choose. However EURO COOP believes that information is not a substitute for decisive action on the problem itself and should in no way be used to provide some misleading guarantee to the consumer.
- Further measures to protect consumers should include :
- the full implementation of Directive 92/102 on the identification and registration of animals and assurance of the traceability of any movement of individual cattle both nationally and across frontiers;
- the encouragement of systems assuring that meat is traceable back to the slaughterhouse;
- a ban on the feeding of any animal protein to ruminants;
- a ban on the use of animal protein from animals excluded from the food chain in feedingstuffs for animals bred for human consumption;
- the enforcement of controls by the authorities at all stages of the production;
- controls on the production of mechanically recovered meat (MRM) and a requirement to label as such;
- the labelling of beef in the ingredient list of foodstuffs.
- full transparency on the scientific basis on which Community decisions are taken.
- EURO COOP does not believe that labelling solves the problem; meat is required to be safe. However EURO COOP acknowledges that consumers want to be informed of the presence of beef in order to choose. EURO COOP also recognises that, although it is no guarantee of safety, there is currently a strong consumer demand to know the origin of the meat. EURO COOP believes therefore that such indication could be encouraged on a voluntary basis.
- Finally, EURO COOP calls upon the European institutions to allocate increased funding for independent research into the origin of BSE, in particular into whether and how it is transmitted to other animals and to humans, into a test for use on live animals, and into the development of a reliable system of epidemiological monitoring of BSE.
This information should, of course, be made available to consumers.
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