Undesirable substances in animal feed

1999/0259(COD)
The committee adopted the report (codecision procedure, first reading) by Marit PAULSEN (ELDR, S) amending the Commission proposal for a Directive on undesirable substances and products in animal nutrition. The amendments were aimed at widening the scope of the directive so as to cover all products intended for animal feedingstuffs and to make it applicable to "homegrown" feedingstuffs, i.e. those grown on the farm where they are consumed. As the entire scope of the directive was defined by the first paragraph of Article 1, the committee adopted an amendment referring to undesirable substances and products "in products of any kind intended for" animal nutrition, thus ensuring that this collective term could be used to include feedingstuffs, feed materials, feed additives and premixtures. The committee also sought to introduce much stricter levels for mercury, cadmium, dioxin and PCBs in certain feedingstuffs. It argued that the only way to reduce contamination at the end of the food chain was to exclude at the start feed materials that were too highly contaminated.