Activites

• 2003/11/13 Final act published in Official Journal
• 2002/09/03 Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
  • T5-0397/2002 summary

    The European Parliament adopted its resolution based on the report by Struan Stevenson (EPP-ED, United Kingdom). Parliament felt that the best way to ensure a high degree of food safety is by controlling production from source to finished product within the EU. It recommended the development of EU plant protein production to reduce reliance on imports. Other species of grain legumes need to be introduced, such as yellow lupins, and chickling-vetch. The cycle of pathogens can be broken by introducing plant protein-producing crops in cereal crop rotation, and thereby decreasing the use of pesticides and increasing resilience to disease. The Commission is asked to explore how the Blair house agreements might be terminated to enable EU-based protein production to be increased. It is also asked to produce either a safety net or an income-insurance scheme to benefit producers of oilseed and protein crops.�

• 2002/09/02 Debate in Parliament
  • Debate in Parliament
• 2002/06/18 Vote in committee, 1st reading/single reading
  • A5-0242/2002
• #X016
• 2002/02/18 Council Meeting
• #2402
• 2001/12/19 Council Meeting
  • 2402
• 2001/07/02 Committee referral announced in Parliament, 1st reading/single reading
• #2339
• 2001/03/19 Council Meeting
  • 2339
• 2001/03/16 Non-legislative basic document published
  • COM(2001)0148 summary

    PURPOSE : to examine the options on the cultivation of plant proteins in the European Union. CONTENT : The paper examines ways of increasing production of oilseeds and protein crops such as peas and beans. It also looks at the option of authorising growing protein crops on set-aside land, and increasing production of dried fodder. The advantages, drawbacks and cost implications are discussed. The paper arrives at the following conclusions: - Following the BSE crisis, the demand for and the production of pig and poultry meat are expected to rise. This will increase the need for feed proteins in these two sectors, in addition to the need to replace about 2 Mio t of animal feed. - There is no major problem in replacing protein from animal meals by protein from plants. The best source of plant protein in this respect is soya meal. However, under current price relationships between cereals and soya meal, the feed industry and the farmers will not react by simply using more soya meal. Their response will be threefold: - the feeding of protein rich ingredients will be reduced to the minimum zoo-technical requirements. This is expected to lead to a slight overall reduction of the use of crude protein in animal feed as compared to 1998 and 1999. - the uptake of cereals in animal feed will increase. - any deficit will mainly be covered through additional imports of soya meal, which would be quite limited (1-1.5 Mio t). There is no problem of availability of soya meal on the world market. Additional imports would add some 5% to existing imports. - the options presented here would lead to an increase in domestically produced plant proteins. However, each of them would satisfy the additional needs only to a limited extent, and in some cases only in an indirect way, as they would be mainly targeted at ruminants and not at pigs and poultry. Some of the options would lead to additional expenditure and the opportunity costs per additional ton of soya meal equivalent would appear to be quite high. Careful attention needs to be paid to possible WTO implications. �

  • DG [{'url': 'http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/agriculture/', 'title': 'Agriculture and Rural Development'}],

Documents

• Non-legislative basic document published: COM(2001)0148
• Debate in Council: 2339
• Debate in Council: 2402
• Committee report tabled for plenary, single reading: A5-0242/2002
• Debate in Parliament: Debate in Parliament
• Decision by Parliament, 1st reading/single reading: T5-0397/2002

History

(these mark the time of scraping, not the official date of the change)