Strasbourg, 10/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 10 July, the European Parliament backed the lifting of the ban on feeding fishmeal and fish oil to ruminants. Since 2001, the EU has banned all animal meal as part of the fight against mad cow disease.
The EP adopted the own initiative report by Struan Stevenson (EPP-ED, UK) on the production of fishmeal and fish oil. The report stressed that there was “no scientific evidence to support a total ban on fishmeal on the grounds that it may transmit BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) or other TSEs (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies)”, such as scrapie in sheep.
MEPs noted that the December 2006 regulation, updating the 2001 rules on monitoring and eradicating certain TSEs, prohibits the feeding of animal protein to ruminants, but allows the European Commission to grant derogations for feeding fishmeal to young ruminants, “provided that such derogations are based on a scientific assessment of the dietary needs of young ruminants and follow an assessment of the control aspects”.
The EP also felt that fishmeal could provide a solution to the problem of discards of dead fish (when the fish are being sorted on board vessels) which could be as high as one million tonnes per year in Europe.
The rapporteur said that the fishmeal and fish oil sector provides indirect employment to 30,000 people in the EU and to more than 100,000 in Peru, the world's largest producer and exporter of fishmeal. The United Kingdom is the EU's largest fish meal consumer. (lc)