Auroi (Verts/ALE). – (FR) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the major challenge of this directive – and this is what the Commission desires – is to achieve clear labelling, for both food products as well as animal feed and enzymes.

We must reiterate that when we eat animals, we are eating the food that they themselves consumed. Consumers therefore want to know, and many farmers also want to know, what animals eat.

Since, initially, I had been appointed draftsman on this issue as a member of the Committee on Agriculture, I felt obliged not to table this opinion on my behalf, such was the desire of my fellow Members – and Mrs Redondo, an inveterate productivist and defender of genetically manipulated organisms, pointed this out earlier – to confuse the debate.

I am therefore delighted to be able to support Mrs Scheele and the Committee on the Environment, who are not only demanding clear labelling but are lowering the traceability threshold to 0.5%. Scientists are now telling us that they can detect food containing 0.01% of GMOs. If we therefore want to give consumers clear information on what they want to know, it is indeed possible.

The second thing that we must not forget, above all else, is that the requirements must be the same for imported products, so that the consumer has reassurance on products which are from outside and on products which are produced within the European Union. It is on this basis, and this basis alone, that we will effectively manage to reassure and to reconcile consumers and producers.