----- Original Message -----
From: Larry Harris and Denise O'Brien <hnob@nishna.net>
Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 1999 7:40 AM
Subject: Fw: Press release : The scandal of dioxin
inpoultry is the scandal of industrial breeding...
>////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////>
>CPE
> >Coordination Paysanne Européenne
> >European Farmers Coordination
> >Coordinadora Campesina Europea
> >Rue Stévin 115 - 1000 Bruxelles - B
> >tel: (32) 2 230 07 76 fax: (32) 2 230 03 48>
>E-mail: cpe@agoranet.be>
>/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////>
> >PRESS RELEASE 3rd June 1999>
The scandal of dioxin in poultry is the scandal of
industrial breeding and of the race for the lowest possible
production costs without any regardf or
the population's health. After the BSE scandal, the issue
of resistance to antibiotics and now the dioxin crisis,
what are the Governments and the European Commission
waiting
for to tackle the scandal of industrial breeding?
Nothing has been done either in the present CAP or in
Agenda 2000 to curb the industrialisation of stockbreeding,
which CPE has been denouncing for many years. Pork and
poultry production are the most industrialised,
which causes a frantic race for lowering production costs
with a structural
over production that the European Union refuses to bring
under control, very low agricultural prices that only the
biggest breeding farmssupported by the agroindustrial and
banking sector can survive. The European Union speaks a lot
about food safety,sustainableagriculture, the environment,
but it is doing just the opposite and prefers to protect
the interests of the agroindustrial and banking sector. How
many scandals will we have to suffer for theconsumers to
understand that the very low-priced farm produce stemming
from theindustrialisation of production generates costs in
the fields of publichealth, the environment,unemployment,
which they support as tax-payers?
Industrial stockbreeding generates outrageous costs
forsociety:
- it leads to the disappearance of most stockbreeders,with
a high economic and social cost in rural areas,
- it is concentrated in a few maritime regions because it
developed on the basis of imports of animal feedstuffs from
all over theplanet at the lowest possible price. These
regions (land, rivers, groundwater, coastal waters)
are overflowing with manure or droppings which causemajor
environmental and water quality problems.
- it uses antibiotics in feedstuffs, tranquillisers
forstressed animals, growth promoters, hormones, regardless
of human and animal health,
- it uses unsafe agricultural or industrial waste tofeed
the animals(e.g. citrus fruit waste with a too high
pesticide content,animal fat from carcass disposal, etc.),
- it furthers epidemics, such as the swine fever thathave
already cost a lot to European taxpayers,
- it doesn't respect the animals,
- it produces standardised and tasteless meat. PE urges the
European Union to make sure that industrial stockbreeding
is
gradually put an end to and to favour sustainableproduction
ways linked to the soil (stockbreeding not linked to the
soil is nolonger agriculture); the following measures are
indispensable:
- a ban on all antibiotics, growth promoters andgenetically
modified organisms in animal feedstuffs,
- the strict implementation of the nitrates directive,
- a limitation of the size of breeding farms,
- a ban on breeding practices that don't respect
theanimals,
- a ban on the building of any new industrial breeding
factory (to be defined together with the link to the land,
the size,the employment),
- a ban on animal flour or fat in animal feedstuffs,
- the modification of the agricultural curricula so asto
foster breeding practices linked to the soil among young
people. The stockbreeders affected by the dioxin crisis
mustreceive financial compensation from the animal
feedstuffs companies that are responsible for the scandal
and must be sued.
_________________________________________________________
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