Bovine animals: a common technology for electronic identification

Today, Members of the European Parliament adopted, by 372 votes to 246, two reports written by Sophie Auconie MEP on the 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 carry out electronic identification of their bovine animals. Not supporting this initiative would have been totally irresponsible: when we develop different technologies within the European Union that 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, by simply anticipating the problem.”

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

"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, because this would be hijacking farmers and the beef industry!"