Public health: control of salmonella and food-born zoonotic agents

2001/0177(COD)
The committee adopted the report by Marit PAULSEN (ELDR, S) amending the Council's common position under the 2nd reading of the codecision procedure. While welcoming the fact that the common position had incorporated the bulk of Parliament's 1st reading amendments, MEPs felt that three new aspects were unacceptable and needed modifying: - the reference to a "favourable cost/benefit analysis" (on the basis of which the Commission would propose Community targets where appropriate) should be deleted, on the grounds that public health and the illness and suffering of individuals cannot reasonably be assessed in strictly economic terms; - the Community target should not be based on "a weighted average of the data for the last three years for which data are available", as this would mean using old data to deal with a current situation; - the Community target should not be restricted to a maximum of five serotypes during a transitional period. The committee also proposed that, for the purposes of determining the salmonella serotypes with public health significance to which Community targets will apply, invasive and/or antibiotic-resistant serotypes should also be taken into account, as should the presence of the serotype in animal feed (i.e. not just in relevant animal populations).�