Strasbourg, 12/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the European Parliament adopted, on third reading, the agreement reached in conciliation with the Council in October for new provisions relating to the movement of compound feed for animals.
Ingo Friedrich (German, EPP-ED) head of the Parliamentary delegation within the Conciliation Committee and Friedrich-Wilhelm Graef zu Baringdorf (German, Greens/EFA), rapporteur and Chair of the EP's Agriculture Committee, welcomed the outcome of the vote that they consider as excellent. In fact, during the conciliation procedure Parliament secured compulsory labelling of the exact weight of each ingredient contained within animal feed rather than an approximate percentage, formula that the Council preferred. The Council/EP compromise agreement nevertheless provides for a level of tolerance of more or less 15% for the indication of the weight (for example, if a manufacturer declares that a feed is composed of 10% of barley, the real percentage of barley needs to be between 8.5% and 11.5%), on condition that the manufacturers are legally obliged to provide farmers, when requested, with information excluding all margin of error. The Commission will review the level of tolerance three years after the directive has been implemented in Member States. It is now, moreover, held to submit a proposal on the basis of a feasibility study so as to put in place a "positive list" of approved feed. This list, that Parliament has been demanding for a long time, should be submitted to it by 31 December 2002 at the latest.