madam president thank you for the opportunity to speak on this very important point
consumers are quite rightly demanding that the food they purchase is safe traceable and produced to a high standard
i would support a country of origin labelling system which promotes such standards and i believe that this will be widely acceptable to most consumers and to most within the industry
obviously promotion and marketing will be the hallmark of the success or failure of such a policy
we must take firm action against the potential counterfeiting of products which are wrongly labelled
i like many colleagues in this chamber would be against an eu logo
i feel it would be largely meaningless and would not be helpful to consumers
country of origin labelling and even geographical indicators are important because they promote locality local heritage and conservation of local techniques and they protect areas which rely on the production of a particular product
i come from northern ireland a net exporter of agricultural products
therefore i want any labelling system to create a level playing field
anything that impacts on the export of products from countries like my own would have a detrimental impact on the industry
like other colleagues i would support the quality assurance schemes that are available and encourage those as part of the general local indicator
