mr president following that may not be easy let me say that i have no difficulty whatsoever with efficient and proper rules governing animal welfare but i am becoming concerned that we are getting ourselves onto a treadmill where we are going to so tighten the noose around our agricultural industry that its practical functioning will be rendered impossible
i do see signs of such a development emerging from the commission consultation on reviewing the maximum travelling times and stock densities in transporting animals
the commission let us recall failed to get its way in the two thousand and five regulation
however less than two years after it came into effect it is trying again with an attempt to remove the repeatability of the eight-hour limit
i must say that for my constituency of northern ireland it would be ruinous because to export animals which we do we are required to undertake a sea journey and if only one period of eight hours is allowed that would be utterly inadequate and utterly unacceptable
i would remind the house that such onerous conditions would not compare at all with the huge distances that animals are transported in south america from whence we happily import so yet again we would be in the business of punishing our own farmers while caring nothing about what affects the imports we receive
i have to say that we have to get to a point of getting rid of this obsession of cutting off our nose to spite our face
