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JOINT COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FOOD díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 15 Nov 2006

Scrutiny of EU Proposals.

I welcome Mr. Dermot Ryan and again, Dr. Hackett and Mr. John Downey from the Department of Agriculture and Food who are here to update the members on COM (2006) 340, a proposal to amend the Council directive on the circulation of compound feedstuffs.

Before asking Mr. Ryan to make his opening remarks I draw his attention to the fact that while members of the committee have absolute privilege the same privilege does not extend to witnesses. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that they should not comment on, criticise or make charges against a person outside the House or an official by name or in such a way as to make him or her identifiable.

I invite Mr. Ryan to make his opening remarks.

Mr. Dermot Ryan

I thank the Chairman for inviting the Department of Agriculture and Food to update the committee on COM (2006) 340, a proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and the Council correcting Directive 2002/2EC amending Council Directive 79/373 on the circulation of compound feeding stuffs.

Before dealing specifically with the proposal before us I will give a short overview of how animal feed controls operate here. All legislation governing controls in the use of animal feeding stuffs in Ireland is based on EU legislation which has been adopted by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers and is binding on all member states.

The Department of Agriculture and Food is the competent authority here with responsibility for the transposition of this legislation into national law and for its full implementation. Departmental staff carrying out inspections of animal feeding stuffs are individually authorised by the Minister for this purpose. Each year a risk-based inspection programme is drawn up and some 3,000 feed samples are taken at points of import, at manufacturing mills and on farms, and are sent for analysis to designated laboratories, chiefly the State Laboratory and the Irish Equine Centre in Kill, County Kildare.

The samples are analysed for a broad range of analytes such as protein, fibre and ash content, as well as for the presence of prohibited animal proteins, undesirable substances, metals, micro-toxins, etc. Animal feed legislation also governs the use of certain additives, the circulation of feeding stuffs in the marketplace and the adequate labelling of feed products to ensure full traceability.

The proposal before us relates to labelling. The proposal is for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council, correcting Directive 2002/2 amending Council Directive 79/373 on the circulation of compound feeding stuffs. The European Parliament and the Council of Ministers are obliged to correct Directive 2002/2. This obligation follows a ruling last December by the European Court of Justice. Council Directive 79/373 lays down the rules for the circulation of compound feeding stuffs within the community.

The purpose of the directive is to ensure that labelling informs farmers objectively and as accurately as possible about the composition and use of feeding stuffs. Directive 2002/2 which was introduced into national legislation by SI 237 of 2003 introduced eight distinct amendments to Directive 79/373, most of which were at the behest of the European Parliament. These amendments were to become effective from November 2003.

Notwithstanding the fact that the amending directive was approved at European Parliament and Council of Ministers level, concerns were expressed within the feed industry of several member states, including Ireland regarding two of the amendments. These referred to obligations on the animal feed industry, first, to list the feed materials present in a compound feed in descending order of inclusion, with an indication of plus or minus 15% of the actual percentage of each feed material in the compound, and, second, to give details on request to the purchaser of the exact percentages by weight of the feed materials used in the manufacture of the compound feed.

The feed industry in these concerned member states secured a stay through their national courts on the implementation of the provisions of Directive 2002/2 pending a ruling on the two points by the European Court of Justice, ECJ. In December 2005 the ECJ ruled that the requirement to list ingredients of compound feed on a label within a tolerance of plus or minus 15% was proportionate and therefore valid, but the requirement to disclose the exact percentage ingredient information on request to customers violated intellectual property rights and was disproportionate and therefore invalid.

Consequently, it was incumbent on the Commission to come forward with a proposal to amend Directive 2002/2 to give effect to the ECJ ruling. The Commission proposal is simply to delete the invalid provision, Article 1(1)(b) from the original directive by means of a Council decision. It argues that since an overall review of the feed labelling legislation is planned for late 2007, such an approach is the most pragmatic.

This proposal has been discussed at both Council working group level and at the European Parliament. The Council working group has accepted the Commission proposal as being purely a corrective exercise, notwithstanding the fact that some feed industries are still dissatisfied with the plus or minus 15% requirement in that it will compel compounders to display information which they consider to be commercially sensitive.

The European Parliament, however, has not adopted a formal position on the proposal but one is anticipated before the end of the year. If there is a convergence of views new legislation is likely to be adopted early in the new year.

The Irish feed industry secured a stay in the High Court in March 2004 and prevented the Minister for Agriculture and Food from implementing the provisions of Directive 2002/2 pending the ECJ ruling. Consideration of the stay was listed for the High Court last month, but the Department instructed our counsel to adjourn the matter until the amending proposal has been passed into law, following which the Minister will introduce a statutory instrument to give effect to the new dispensation.

I hope I have sufficiently outlined the Department's role in animal feed controls and elaborated on the progress of the proposal. My colleagues and I are happy to answer any questions.

How will the plus or minus 15% tolerance impact on farmers' compliance with the nitrates directive in the context of feeds and feedstuffs? Plus or minus 15% represents a potential variation of 30%. If a farmer were approaching the phosphorous or nitrogen threshold, the specific ingredients could influence whether a prosecution would take place. Does the 15% variation include GM ingredients for which there is a much lower threshold?

While I accept that he may not have the figures available to him, I would appreciate from Mr. Ryan an up-to-date report on the amount of GM product being admitted to Ireland or presenting for import which has not been labelled as GM as indicated by the analysis of the Department of Agriculture and Food.

Plus or minus 15% is a generous variation given the possibility of a difference of up to 30% in ingredients. How can a person who has specific animal nutrition requirements from feed accept so great a differential and organise feeding days for stock? Deputy Naughten raised the matter from the perspective of the impact on the nitrates directive, but there is also the question of animal health and what is being fed to livestock. Even though a variation of plus or minus 15% has been written into the directive, it is rendered slightly artificial by the prospect that it would not be especially difficult for a producer's enterprising opponent to conduct an analysis to discover, broadly, the percentage of each component of a feed product.

Mr. Ryan

The plus or minus 15% variation refers to plus or minus 15% of the actual ingredient in the product. For example, if the product is 20% soya bean, the variation is plus or minus 15% of 20%. Under our system of controls, we routinely sample feedstuffs and compound feeds to ensure that the correct ingredients are being used. Currently, any competitor is free to purchase the feedstuff of another producer to analyse its content.

Our colleagues who deal with the nitrates directive update information constantly on the nitrogen and phosphorous consumption of animals from the available diets. Elaborate tables are in place to measure inputs of what animals are consuming and outputs. The circumstances to which Deputy Naughten refers are well catered for and there is no great implication for the nitrates directive in these proposals. I ask my colleagues to deal with unlabelled imports of GM products.

Dr. Hackett

If a product has greater than 0.9% GM content, it is declared as GM, which has no relevance to feed labelling. The plus or minus 15% variation relates to the proportion of maize, soya or barley and any declaration of GM maize relates to additional material. In 2005, 464,000 tonnes of GM maize was imported into Ireland, which was 95% of the total maize brought in. Of soya imports, 95%, or 204,000 tonnes, was GM product. Of GM rapeseed, 3% of total imports were of GM origin while none of the cotton seed imports were GM product. The majority of maize and soya is GM product, while the majority of rapeseed and cotton seed is not.

I ask Dr. Hackett to revert to the committee on the testing which is carried out. As the committee heard previously, a percentage of imports not labelled as GM product was found on analysis to be GM in origin. Has mislabelling of GM product been discovered in the case of the 3,000 feed samples referred to? We do not need the information now and can wait for the witnesses to revert to the committee.

Dr. Hackett

Of the imported products, 95% are declared GM. All samples of those imports that are unlabelled or declared GM-free are analysed. The figures are easily available. In the 5% of imports in question, there were three or four instances of wrongly declared product. I can check the figures for the Deputy.

I thank Mr. Ryan, Dr. Hackett and Mr. Downey for attending today's meeting and for the way in which they responded to questions raised by members. The clerk will prepare a draft report on today's discussions for the next meeting. Is that agreed? Agreed. We must suspend for a division.

Sitting suspended at 12.50 p.m. and resumed at 1.05 p.m.
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