Bovine animals/Beef : we will make it easier and avoid the "fiasco" of power plugs!

Today Members of the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety adopted by 29 votes to 26, two reports written by Sophie Auconie MEP on electronic identification of bovine animals and the simplification of voluntary beef labelling. Rapporteur Sophie Auconie expressed her great satisfaction with the result:

"One of the key issues of this report was to have common technology for all European stock farmers who voluntarily start with the electronic identification of their bovine animals. Not supporting this initiative would have been totally irresponsible: when we develop different technologies within the European Union which are mutually incompatible, we end up battling for years to decide on a common one ... This only creates losers, to the detriment of an entire sector!

That’s what happened with the choice of power plugs for electric vehicles and that was totally irresponsible!  With today’s vote we avoid a similar fiasco!”

"On beef labelling, we will simplify the optional procedure on labelling, i.e. the “commercial” labelling, in order to make it possible for farmers to better communicate about the quality of their products. We need to make the rules simple wherever possible! Obviously, we will not modify the fundamental clauses related to the origin of beef."

"Prior to the adoption of my reports, there had been a request to postpone the vote in Committee but we won this procedural vote by a single vote: some MEPs wanted to block these reports on the ground that the European Commission’s proposals on cloning were not satisfactory.  My answer was: yes, let’s work together in order to supervise cloning but let’s not hijack these reports, the farmers and the beef industry!"