During the meeting of the Committee&nbsp;on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) in the EP in Brussels, MEPs debate on the finding of&nbsp;Fipronil in eggs. Statements by Sabine JULICHER, Director for Food and Feed Safety &amp; Innovation at DG SANTE, Eric ANDRIEU (S&amp;D, FR), Maria Lidia SENRA RODRIGUEZ, Ulrike MULLER (ALDE, DE), Mairead MCGUINNESS (EPP, IE), Michel DANTIN (EPP, FR) and Clara Eugenia AGUILERA GARCIA (S&amp;D, ES).

Brussels

debate

meeting

McGUINNESS, Mairead (EPP, IE)

SENRA RODRÍGUEZ, Maria Lidia (GUE/NGL, ES)

ANDRIEU, Eric (S&D, FR)

food safety (T)

Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development

AGUILERA, Clara (S&D, ES)

DANTIN, Michel (EPP, FR)

Fipronil in eggs: extracts from the debate

Cutaways during the opening of the debate by Paolo de CASTRO, Vice-Chair of the AGRI Committee (3 shots)

SOUNDBITE (English), Sabine J&#220;LICHER, Director for Food and Feed Safety &amp; Innovation at DG SANTE, This illegal treatments contain the substance fipronil which is prohibited in the EU for all producing animals. It is a well-known substance for several uses but not for food producing animals.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sabine J&#220;LICHER, Director for Food and Feed Safety &amp; Innovation at DG SANTE, This illegally treated laying hen farms are mainly located in the Netherlands where initially 281 farms have been blocked in total and currently still about a half of them 144 farms are still blocked. Besides the Netherlands, is Belgium affected where 93 farms have been blocked in total and currently 30 laying hen farms are blocked. There is also evidence that illegal treatment took already place in 2016.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sabine J&#220;LICHER, Director for Food and Feed Safety &amp; Innovation at DG SANTE, Speaking about the possible health risks, all in all, there are to be considered very low to unlikely. There were eggs from only two farms, one in Belgium and one farm in the Netherlands, where the eggs founded were above the level, where the consumption of several of these eggs in short periods possibly could lead to adverse acute health risks.

SOUNDBITE (English), Sabine J&#220;LICHER, Director for Food and Feed Safety &amp; Innovation at DG SANTE, The Commission has also announced its intention to carry out fact finding missions to fully shed light on the incident and in particular in the view of a future follow-up and lessons learnt exercise.

SOUNDBITE (French), Eric ANDRIEU (S&amp;D, FR), Do we know wether the rapid alert system is perfectible, is it capable of improvements, and if so, how can we increase the promptness of the response?

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Maria Lidia SENRA RODR&#205;GUEZ, I do not think that anything has been learnt at all from canola oil, mad cows, poultry dioxin disease, E. coli in Germany, the horse meat scandal, the eggs with salmonella, now we have the eggs with fipronil and so many different scandals. I will not mention all of them. I wonder why you keep turning a blind eye to the consequences to these type of industrial farming, industrial agriculture model that we have, this industrial food production with these large businesses or agrochemical-pharmaceutical industry?

SOUNDBITE (German), Ulrike M&#220;LLER (ALDE, DE), The fipronil scandal shows that the warning system, the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF), is not rapid enough or effective enough.

SOUNDBITE (English), Mairead MCGUINNESS (EPP, IE), The reality is that what happened was illegal and is irresponsible and outrageous but there is a problem for all poultry producers increasing red mite infestation and we need more effective control and innovation. My view is that the Commission needs to talk about the red mites and how they are going to deal with infestations which are not restricted to large scales and to prices and they are a problem for producers.

SOUNDBITE (French), Michel DANTIN (EPP, FR), It seems that several civil servants within the authorities knew or had a suspicion about this for a number of months. Why was not this information shared between member states?

SOUNDBITE (Spanish), Clara Eugenia AGUILERA GARC&#205;A (S&amp;D, ES), You just said that there is another substance called almitraz, that is under research and investigation. Could you perhaps clarify where this has been detected exactly and in order to reassure consumers about this product as well.