Meat & bone meal may be back on the menu
The new Commissioner for Public Health, Food Safety, Animal Health and Welfare, Androula Vassiliou, at a recent Parliament hearing, said that she was looking forward to make progress on topics such as novel foods, plant protection, and the simplification of the rules for the marketing of feed.
MEP Lutz Goepel spoke about the difficulties faced by livestock farmers owing to rising feed prices, when "the EU is continuing to destroy animal protein and import a great deal of fodder".
Vassiliou indicated that the Commission envisaged submitting later this year a proposal on the possibility of reintroducing pig protein into poultry feed and poultry protein into pig feed.
Vassiliou, therefore, is in favour of considering a gradual reintroduction of meat and bone meal in feed. Breeders, who have been calling for such a measure for months, would therefore be allowed to feed poultry meal to pigs and vice versa.
However, she stressed: "the aim is not to reverse the ban on inter-species cannibalism nor the ban on meat-and-bone meal for cattle".
MEP Lutz Goepel spoke about the difficulties faced by livestock farmers owing to rising feed prices, when "the EU is continuing to destroy animal protein and import a great deal of fodder".
Vassiliou indicated that the Commission envisaged submitting later this year a proposal on the possibility of reintroducing pig protein into poultry feed and poultry protein into pig feed.
Vassiliou, therefore, is in favour of considering a gradual reintroduction of meat and bone meal in feed. Breeders, who have been calling for such a measure for months, would therefore be allowed to feed poultry meal to pigs and vice versa.
However, she stressed: "the aim is not to reverse the ban on inter-species cannibalism nor the ban on meat-and-bone meal for cattle".