The Commission's amended proposal for a Directive on undesirable substances and products in animal nutrition, accepted 30 of the 36 amendments proposed by the European Parliament. The main amendments accepted are the following:
- it is more appropriate to use the term "materials intended for animal nutrition" instead of repeating each time "feed materials, feedingstuffs, and feed additives" to ensure that there can be no confusion and ambiguity that all materials intended for use in animal nutrition are covered. In addition, it is appropriate to define this term;
- widening the scope of the Directive in order to cover also the use of all materials intended fr animal nutrition and not only the putting into circulaiton. The Commission agrees with with this extension of the scope;
- editorial improvements, clarifications and additional references to the provisions of Council Directive 1995/53/EC fixing the principles governing the organisation of official inspections in the field of animal nutrition;
- inserting a definition for premixture, which is already foreseen in other relevant Community legislation;
- determining the entry into force in function of the publication of the Directive in the Officail Journal of the European Communities. The Commission agrees that this is indeed more appropriate but it is of the opinion that a longer period seems to be more appropriate, given the far-reaching nature of the proposed measures.
By contrast, the European Parliament amendments rejected by the Commission relate to the following:
- the explicit inclusion of water in the definition of feedingstuff;
- deletion of the provision to define criteria of acceptability of feed mateirals which have undergone certain decontamination procedures;
- the possibility to re-export non-complying consignments to the country of origin;
- modification of the maximum limits for cadmium, lead, dioxin and PCBs in certain feedingstuffs.�