mr president i would like to congratulate mr parish on bringing this forward
despite our political differences and notwithstanding his very obvious deficiencies as a human being i think he is actually very sound on this and i support him
we need this regulation to be a success and we need it to be universally in force but i have a number of reservations and i disagree with some colleagues who spoke this morning
mr stevenson said that longer journeys were unavoidable i say not so
mrs jensen spoke of twenty-four hours transport not necessarily
mr allister the agricultural industry has to ask questions itself
as a civilised society we need to look at the whole question the whole purpose the whole idea of transporting animals long distances and then killing them
if i were a meat eater i would be asking how can the suffering en route which we know about the dehydration the stress and to our irish colleagues north and south the sea journeys possibly improve the quality of the product at the end
to my mind it makes no economic sense
it does not make humanitarian sense
this is why i favour a complete ban on the transport of animals which i believe would support rural economies
it would encourage local producers yes small- and medium-sized enterprises as someone spoke of and it would enable consumption of food as near the point of production as possible
in the absence of that and i know it is not going to happen in the near future i think we need proper realistic enforcement of what we have at the moment the regulation and i urge the commission to use all the agencies across europe police forces on motorways if necessary to stop and check lorries to see whether they are carrying out the full requirements of this legislation
