madam president i just want to pick up on what avril doyle spoke about when she said we have a plethora of initiatives and labels which are ethical and sustainability labels to say that i think the commission needs to look at this to make sure that people are not being misled
the commissioner just spoke about the fisheries labelling and making sure people know what they are buying
with a different hat i have been involved in fair trade and protecting the fair trade label and what we have seen in recent years is alternative labels being developed
some are ok but some are attempting to look as if they are ethical labelling look as if they are fair trade but they are attempting to be fair trade on the cheap without having the independent verification which you need to have a proper labelling system
so i hope that the commission will make sure that all these systems of labelling and ethical labelling do continue to have some integrity and are not undermined to simply become marketing tools of organisations who want to make the public think they are being green and ethical when in fact they are nothing but fig leaves
so i hope that can be looked at by the commission and it does need a cross-departmental look from the commission
every time i talk about this i get told oh it's not us it's the other department and each one seems to offload the burden onto the other
finally just to thank everybody again for their contributions
i look forward to the vote which i hope will be a very simple straightforward one
