RTw (Reuters World Report) / Tue, May 2, 2000 / By David Brough
ROME, May 2 (Reuters) - Italy's new government plans to encourage
farmers to use feed based on "natural" ingredients rather than meat and
bone meal, Farm Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio said on Tuesday.
"We want to give farmers the incentive to feed animals with natural
substances," Scanio, sworn in last week as part of Italy's new government,
told Reuters in a telephone interview.
In the EU, the use of meat and bone meal has been banned for cattle,
but not for other livestock.
Scanio, a member of the Greens party, said he hoped the EU would work
progressively towards removing meat and bone meal from the animal food
chain.
The practise of a feeding cattle meat and bone meal is widely believed
to have been responsible for spreading "mad cow" disease, or BSE (bovine
spongiform encephalopathy), in Britain and other European countries.
France's Farm Minister Jean Glavany in February softened his call for
an EU ban on the use of meat and bone meal in animal feed, citing the
problems that would ensue, such as a shortage of proteins.
ITALY PROMOTES QUALITY FOODS
Asked to outline the main planks of his agricultural policy, Scanio
said Italy aimed to promote sales of its high-quality produce, such as
Parma ham, Parmesan cheese and pasta, and to help develop the rural
economy.
"We have to find the right balance between ecology and economics," he
said.
His predecessor, Paolo De Castro, had also strongly endorsed projects
to boost sales of quality foods around the world.
While Italy cannot compete with the world's leading agricultural
producers in terms of farming area, it can do so in terms of high-quality
processed foods.
MINISTER OPPOSES GM CROPS
Scanio said he opposed genetically modified crops as a precautionary
step amid concerns about possible environmental and health risks.
In a recent interview with the respected La Stampa newspaper, Scanio
said he was against experimentation with GM crops in open fields and that
it should be limited to restricted areas.
He called for wider labelling of produce containing GM material. U.S..
transgenic soybeans, for example, are incorporated into foods sold
worldwide.
In October 1999, the European Commission ruled that all food products
sold in the EU must be labelled as containing GM material if at least one
of their ingredients contained at least one percent GM DNA or protein.
Below that threshold, there is no labelling requirement.
In practice, few foodstuffs sold in Italy are labelled as to their GM
content. Food industry experts say one problem is how to measure food for
its GM content.
Copyright 2000 Reuters Ltd. All rights reserved.
(posted without permission)
