Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, DC

ANTHONY GOOCH: (In progress) – today from the snow, from Brazilians, from Airbus, from – let me tell you, those of you who are interested in those things as well, you are not missing anything as far as Boeing/Airbus is concerned, and I might be able to just give you a sense of things after we stop.

Anyway, it gives us great pleasure to welcome Robert Madellin. Some of you may know Robert from previous incarnations. Many of you are – follow trade issues very closely, and as you will know, Robert has a very distinguished career in the [European] Commission on the trade side, having worked for Commissioner Leon Brittan, and subsequently as a director in DG Trade, handling some of the more complicated issues on the Doha Development Agenda. And now, as the Director General, as the top civil servant handling health, safety and consumer issues for the European Commission. He has been here signing an important document he’s going to tell you about, as well, and he’s going to give you an opportunity also to ask him a number of questions on trade-related health and safety issues – there are a lot of those out there – and consumer issues as well, and for those of you who don’t follow trade so closely with other issues equally, quite a lot of opportunity to go through things.

So Robert, over to you.

ROBERT MADELIN: Thanks.

In a way, the – (aside) – that’s what I have to do. Is that better?

So the reason I’m here has a lot to do with the discussions that the President of the US and Commission President Barroso had, not on the high-profile, political side, but what they said to each other about the transatlantic economic marketplace and regulatory cooperation. So I want to say a piece about that from the perspective of health and consumer affairs, which is the area that I cover, which is an area of policy that means we have as interlocutors in the US quite a range of Federal agencies: the Consumer Product Safety Commission, with whom we signed an MOU yesterday; plus EPA, FDA, USDA – (inaudible) – the Trade Commission; and then places like the Department of Health and USTR, as well. So regulatory cooperation was the reason for the visit, and preparing also the ground for [EU Health & Consumer Affairs] Commissioner Kyprianou’s visit next – well, in about ten weeks’ time.

But let me start, before I say a word about that, by mentioning one or two of the reasons why I think on the substance we need regulatory cooperation. I mean, a good example would be the decision by the ambassadors and Member States in Brussels yesterday to suspend the introduction of a new measure on wood packaging. As I think some of you will have known, the dreaded nematode continues to threaten European forests. In North America you’ve learned to live with it, and the question is: How do we best keep it out of Europe?

The proposition from our scientists has been that we import only debarked wooden pallets because if the bark is taken off the pallets you can see the nematode, and if the bark is still on you might miss the nematode and they would begin to ravage European forests.

At the request of the Commission – I have to say backed by the US Administration, if I can put it that way ‘round – (laughter) – the Member States have agreed to suspend for a year the introduction of this measure in order to allow the global technical dialogue to continue about this approach and I guess the technical justification for it. And I would regard that as both demonstrating why more regulatory cooperation is needed and demonstrating that the makings of good transatlantic cooperation exist. More cooperation is needed because both sides – both the US and the EU went through the standard operating procedures in terms of SPS notification and debate, and yet we got within two weeks of the introduction of a measure which was controversial between us.

At the same, we did address from the Commission side the need to suspend the measure’s entry into force, and we did get the support of the US Administration in doing it. And the Member States agreed that that was worth doing. So we need to do regulatory cooperation to do better together on that sort of issue; to get ahead of the curve and avoid last-minute crises.

I think also that regulatory cooperation offers three benefits which, for me as a regulator in Europe, are of direct benefit. Firstly, we get economies of scale because, through the EU level, people like that their trade commission can get immediate access under an umbrella agreement to the enforcement authorities across the 25 Member States on an issue of a consumer scam, for example. By doing that on both sides – the US and EU – we release resources.

My regulatory counterparts in the US don’t have the resources they need; neither do I. Five thousand people a year die of food-borne diseases in Europe and in the States. In the case of Europe, I don’t know of a single case which I can trace back to US food, so I need to put the resources where the risks arise, and if we can do better together, then I have more resources to do that.

And thirdly, there are tricky issues where we don’t either of us have an answer and where we need to work together to have an effective answer, and I would quote there some of the examples that I have been discussing since Monday. The first would be nutrition and obesity, where most of the people I talk to share a piece of the puzzle; whether it’s the Fair Trade Commission on industry approaches to advertising to children, the FDA on mandatory labeling, Department of Health and Human Services. And similarly, in Europe we’re working with the industry and with consumers to try to come up with a new plan. Nobody has the right answer; we need to work together on that.

A second example would be pandemic flu and bioterror; twin threats which are global, which will cross our frontiers, and which we can only tackle together. What good will it be, for example, if pandemic flu is identified in an early outbreak in one country in Southeast Asia if we have different policies about how to manage quarantine, screening of passengers, for example, coming from that country. If we want to retard the global spread of flu, if we want to detect bioterror threats in time and deal with them, we need a coordinated plan, and so that’s pretty important as well.

And if I come then to consumer product safety, which is the one on which we’ve signed now an MOU with the responsible US Federal agency, both in the US and in the EU, the threats to consumer safety come – I wouldn’t say exclusively, to but a significant degree – from third countries. We’re both big consumers of global supplies – whether it be toys or motorcars or electric hairdryers – and we need to be better at linking up our rapid alert systems so that we are avoiding risks that a product banned in one market will just be shipped to the other. It will be arbitraging between the risk management regimes in the US and EU. And again, we can work together not just to manage threats as they emerge, but to get ahead of the curve by working on new standards and by saving our resources on US-EU trade issues, concentrate on leading third countries towards a better understanding of what we need in terms of safe consumer products.

So those are just a few examples of why we think it matters. I think wood packaging is an example that we can fix it, but it also speaks to the need to get further ahead of the curve so that those problems are being dealt with before they arise.

And assuming that the signals on regulatory and economic cooperation coming out of the Bush-Barroso discussion are now a focus for future work, which I certainly do, I think that the message I take home from the different discussions with the agencies I’ve mentioned is that, you know, people here are also open for business to cooperate with the EU institutions because these issues about getting economies of scale, doing better and releasing our resources for the really risky issues are the same on both sides of the Atlantic.

So that’s a bit of the sort of central message I wanted to bring, but at the same time, that sort of short presentation can’t cover the whole range of issues we’ve discussed on the food-chain regulatory side, on public health issues and on consumer protection. So if there are any other issues I haven’t mentioned or questions people want to bring up, that would be fine.

Thank you.

Q: Just off the top on wood packing, I mean – I’m sorry, if you could say again who was it that approved it?

MR. MADELIN: It was the ambassador to the Member States.

Q: Ambassador to the Member States.

MR. MADELIN: So that means that the formal endorsement now comes – as a formality it goes as a point on a Council agenda simply to be gaveled through at the political level. So we now have a guarantee of suspension on time ahead of the entry in force on the 1st of March.

Q: So it will – that happened on Monday – that formal approval process?

MR. MADELIN: I’m not sure which –

UNIDENTIFIED: It was the 28th.

MR. MADELIN: 28th, yeah. Monday. Right.

Q: Okay, and – I’m sorry, can you tell me what the practical effect of that is? Is that simply a one-year breather, and what do you hope – where do you hope we are a year from today? What should the US packing crate folks plan on for one year from now, and what do you folks expect?

MR. MADELIN: Right. Well, it’s a one-year breather, yes. The enemies of the nematode in the US science community and in Europe are already hard at work on this issue. They will be meeting – I think the next one coming through is in Vancouver in a week or two’s time. And so that year will be quite important for getting a better consensus – how you can guarantee that when you’ve treated the wood, you’ve got the nematode out. How can you guarantee they don’t get back in before the product is shipped – that’s the real problem because you can have a packing case of wood with bark on, you treat it so any nematodes are killed, but it’s not a treatment which makes the wood unfriendly to nematodes. So they can come back in, and without the – with the bark still on you can’t do an effective regulatory check, even just a sampling check to see whether that pallet is nematode-free; whereas with the bark off, you have means of doing a good technical check and auditing the supply chain to make sure that the problem is not arising.

So that’s the question: Do the technicians have a different solution to debarking? If not, then we need a smooth solution.

Now it’s a year’s breathing space, but of course one of the problems this time around where frankly our sense is that the different players in the supply chain in the US and maybe other places haven’t woken up early enough for the 1st March deadline, so now they have a year’s notice, which means maybe we come to a solution which is different. But the null hypothesis is in a year’s time you need bark-free packing cases. And so sometime during that year people have to begin taking their own decisions as economic operators what gamble they want to make. Do they want to gamble that there isn’t a better solution and make sure they’ve got enough bark-free pallets, or do they want to gamble that there will be a better solution against the risk that 1st of March 2006 we still have a ban on non-debarked – or bark-carrying pallets.

Q: But does the industry on the US side – are they arguing that this debarking is unnecessary and that’s why they didn’t want the regulation to go into effect, or did they just say, you know, we were caught off-guard; we just need more – we need more time?

MR. MADELIN: Well, they’d have to tell you what their view is. (Chuckles.) But our – and what they have said is please, please, please stop this. Give us time to speak. Okay, so we’ve got time, and on balance. But it was not an easy decision on the EU side. There was a – I would say there was a strong degree of political goodwill in getting this final decision. On balance, people were prepared to extend the period of risk of nematode invasion for a year in the hope of finding an agreed approach.

Q: And Ambassador Zoellick – he just figured that this could disrupt – (by anyone’s acknowledgment?) – US exports to Europe? I mean, do you think that that’s a fair characterization of the amount of trade that could have been held up by this – (inaudible)?

MR. MADELIN: Well, it’s clear that if US exporters see a regulation due for entry into force which requires bark-free pallets and make no move to provide bark-free pallets, then you are heading for a brick wall, okay? Some of the guys in the trade said we didn’t know, we didn’t notice, nobody told us even when they’d seen it notified in Geneva, okay? This has now got sufficient coverage; everybody knows it is coming. Whether trade is disrupted depends on what the suppliers decide to do.

What we’ve done is to take a risk with Europe’s forests to keep the trade flowing now. What I think you should not expect is that the risk can be extended unduly. But that’s why I say there was a degree of political goodwill in taking this decision because if you ask the technicians, they would say this is a very high-risk issue if the nematode gets in, so should we not impose the measure straightaway.

On balance, what the political side in Europe has decided to do is to try to work together to find a solution, but I don’t think that means that, you know, in another year’s time people can say we’re not ready; we need another year.

Q: Sir, a more general question is – actually, I have two questions.

We’ve been hearing for years about this early warning system on regulatory issues, and yet here we have a directive that was about to be implemented within two weeks. Isn’t this a failure of that system when it was supposed to be set up a few years ago?

MR. MADELIN: Yes. (Laughter.) But the – I – what do you want me to say? The early warning system for a measure of this sort requires notification through the SDS Committee, which Europe did. And the US said, we’re not very happy about this, and then everything went quiet until about six weeks ago.

So the warning was there. It was rather – I think what failed in this case was the follow-up to the early warning on both sides, if I can be frank.

Q: By the United States and the Member States.

MR. MADELIN: And the Europeans, yes.

Q: The second question is how do you spell nematodes? (Laughter.)

MR. MADELIN: N – they are not toads. It took me years to – (laughter) – N-E-M-A-T-O-D-E-S. (Laughter.)

Yes?

Q: You mentioned mandatory nutrition labeling, and I know there’s been a lot of talk back and forth across the Atlantic between FDA, I guess, and – (inaudible) – but that seems – as I understand it, it has sort of bogged down in the European Parliament, right? Disagreements over nutritional – (inaudible) – can you sort of bring us up to speed?

MR. MADELIN: Yes. Well, yeah, let me give you a heads-up. Let me start from the problem of obesity because, I mean, food is fine in the right quantities in the right place, but what we’ve seen in recent years is that the – the challenge of overweight and obese children and adolescents in Europe is rising to proportions that are comparable with the worst in the world. In some countries you find adolescent obesity prevalent above 30 percent, and what that means is that, although the population-wide figures for Europe look reassuring compared to some other countries in the world, the future looks very bad.

So one issue is: How do you empower consumers to understand better what it is they’re getting when they buy stuff? Related to that is the fact that advertising works. Two recent studies have come out in Europe: one, a sort of (metro?) analysis confirming that advertising on food does affect children’s recognition of food offerings and the reaction to that stimulus, and the second confirming that among the different things that make consumers tick, health claims work really well. You know, extra Vitamin C in this sugar-loaded breakfast cereal, for example. (Laughter.)

So we have several different problems around the labeling issue at the moment. One is health claims. Do you – and that’s where your reference to nutritional profiling comes in – do you limit the extent to which health claims can be linked to certain sorts of food? And the second issue is; Do we update our mandatory labeling to give better information on the calorie and nutritional content of food: so do you give labeling on salt as well as sodium; trans-fats as well as fats in general; calories; proportion – do you give guidelines on the amounts?

And then the third piece of the debate is about non-labeling forms of commercial communication, as I was saying, and that’s more an industry-dialogue issue where companies and the advertising industry, I think on both sides of the Atlantic, are in dialogue with their stakeholders about what sort of advertising is appropriate.

On the first point – health claims – the new Parliament and the new Commission have re-launched the debate on the directive, and we’re quite optimistic that we can now make some good progress in the month ahead.

On food labeling – the mandatory side – we’re going to be launching a stakeholder consultation process in the course of this year to sit down with consumer and producer and retailer interests and try and work out what works for consumers. And that’s an issue where I think there’s a lot of information to share across the Atlantic.

And on the broader stuff, we’re going to launch next month in Europe a nutrition platform for action, which Commissioner Kyprianou will steer, and which will involve the whole of the food chain – trying to get people to do more to be part of the solution, so not an exercise in trying to apportion blame or come out with a perfect policy, but trying to take the initiatives, which very many companies and very many NGOs and governments are taking already, and build them into an EU-wide campaign to halt and reverse the trends on obesity. So it’s a very balanced mixture of voluntary action and legislation, and I would say that the voluntary action is the most innovative part of that agenda which the new Commission is developing. And what I’ve heard this week talking – as I say, not just to the Department of Health, but also FDA, but also the Fair Trade Commission – is those are the same issues here. And so it’s a good example of trying to share the data we have and share our approaches, not least because, you know, it’s the same human beings who are US and European citizens, and it’s quite often the same companies who are in the food chain both sides of the Atlantic.

Q: Could you sort of put in context this wood – back to that wood-packaging issue – can you sort of put in context what percentage of trade is sort of bark-free or – I don’t know what the expression is – but isn’t a lot of trade done with these plastic pallets? I mean –

MR. MADELIN: Food –

Q: – if you’re talking about –

MR. MADELIN: Food can’t be shipped on wooden pallets, so food tends not to be there, but quite a lot of everything else is loaded on wooden pallets and put in containers. And the – Tony [Van der Haegen] says the US says 50 percent of your export trade is loaded on wooden pallets, and as a matter of cutting costs, I guess, what we’ve been told – but you have to ask the industry – is that the majority of North-American-produced pallets are not debarked.

Q: So 50 percent of the $80 billion or is 80 billion 50 percent of the –

MR. MADELIN: Well, 80 billion (dollars) is Mr. Zoellick’s figure, so you’d have to ask USTR what they think. But we’re not – we’re not disputing that this is a big deal in terms of change. At the same time, like any regulatory change, it’s good news for some and bad news for others. I mean, if you’re making wooden pallets, then having to sort of renew the stock is good news.

Q: Partially, but do – does Europe strip – well, maybe the nematode isn’t an issue – so I don’t know if European pallet makers debark or whether they need to, or whether the conventional treatment of heat and chemical does the trick, or whether you folks are shifting to plastic anyway, so it’s not an issue for you.

MR. MADELIN: Well, the issue is not about where did the wood come from. I mean, once these pallets are in international trade, a barked pallet of European wood, if it sits around in North America, can pick up nematodes. So the issue really is non-discriminatory. It doesn’t matter where the wood is coming from; it depends where the pallets have been. So this would have – you know, the costs which the US has identified are not specific to the US. They’re pretty much global.

And to be clear, the idea of de-barking is not one that we just invented on our own. It’s part of this ongoing, international debate among the enemies of nematodes, the technical experts.

(Confers off mike.)

Yes?

Q: Well, I just wondered where do – do you know where things stand on the GMO case that the US brought against Europe –

MR. MADELIN: The WTO case?

Q: Yes.

MR. MADELIN: Yeah.

Q: (Are they going?) to get a decision on that?

MR. MADELIN: We surely hope so. I mean, this is – the panel, as you know, is allowed – WTO panels are allowed to take more time if they think the case is complex, and the panel in this case has found the case to be extremely complex. They have agreed with the idea that they should have hearings with scientific experts and those took place earlier this month in Geneva. They’ve had, I think, the full round of formal pleadings – have now been concluded. But they can come back with more questions and, therefore, the panel is still very much in the evidence assembly mode. People speculate in Geneva – I was there last week – about whether we get the draft panel report, which is available only to the plaintiff and the defendant parties, and therefore, of course, never leaks before the summer or after the summer. But we’re – you know – we’re looking still at a long haul, it’s by no means imminent and the outcome is by – as far as I would guess – by no means clear.

As background to it, I mean, as you know, the case revolves around this used light. What is a moratorium, does it exist in WTO phrasebooks? Does it exist in European law, has it hampered? And, as you’ve probably also noted, GM events are being approved – GMCs are being put in the common catalog for sale across the whole of the EU. Clearly, European attitudes, if they’re evolving, are not evolving very fast. We don’t have recent EU-wide data or public opinion on this, but we have no indication – let’s say, from the attitude of Member State governments – that somehow there’s been a sea change. At the same time, drip-by-drip, the pipeline is showing itself to be open. So I think the changes going on in Brussels will not themselves be part of the evidence base for the panel, which relates to past events. But it affects – we are convinced – the political climate within which the panel is operating.

And I think if you look to – I mean there are maybe three indicators you could look at. The first is the volume of trade – I wish I had a figure. The volume of trade in GM into Europe, and its huge because, of course, most of the soy is GM, and we’re importing a hell of a lot of soy. Corn is more complicated to import as feed, because some events that are being grown in the major producing countries, including the US, have not yet been either approved or in some cases, submitted for approval. But there is a big trade there. There is a big trade in processed product.

The second indicator is the novel foods – the foods containing GM that have been on the market and which have been notified now – under last year’s deadlines for their approval to remain simply to be confirmed by an administrative measure of the Commission without and sort of review of safety data and that’s in the pipeline.

And then the third is the approvals of new events, where we’ve had two, in the case of NK 603 and GA 21, is that right?

MR. VAN DER HAEGEN: No, it’s NK 603 and then BT 11.

MR. MADELIN: I can never remember codes. Okay, but so, new approvals are also going through. So compared to where we were last autumn, we were expecting these processes to move forward, they’re moving forward as planned. And the panel is taking a bit longer than expected. My colleagues tell me they’re feeling very good, of course when I ask American friends, they say the American colleagues are feeling very good as well. So – (laughter) –

Q: You – I don’t recall who it was, but I – there was an EU official here a few months ago, who was suggesting that the US should just stop the case now because there’s European pipelines, approval pipelines operating at capacity –

MR. MADELIN: Right, well I mean, my personal approach is that it’s not very persuasive if an EU official like myself, I come to Washington, I say, we’re sure to win, you can just drop the case. And then you’d say what, I’d always say that. What is true is that the facts on the ground show, yes, the pipeline is operating. We were not – we were sad, but not frightened of this case. We’re getting less frightened as the evidence piles up. But each sovereign member of the WTO is free to deploy its limited resources on the cases it feels are interesting.

Q: By evidence, you mean the continued follow-up to Europe.

MR. MADELIN: Well, I meant both that and the evidence that the panel is getting from scientists about what is a valid view of hazards, what is a valid view of uncertainty?

Q: Any comment on this Sudan guanine recall. I gather the Commission is not very happy with the wake of the case and –

MR. MADELIN: Yeah, but I think on that – I mean, Anthony can fill you in on the background – I mean, firstly the product in question. I think you’re talking about regulatory cooperation, the FDA and our guys agree that it’s carcinogenic; it should not be in food. It’s banned.

Secondly, we have been sharing – between ourselves and the US and other trading partners for some months – data showing that there continues to be widespread use of the Sudan family of coloring in palm oil from Africa, in some spice products from the Indian sub-continent. And because of these inputs, which are mainly inputs to the EU food chain, you tend to get – you can then risk finding traces of Sudan because there’s a smidgen of palm oil or a smidgen of spice in prepared foods. We are therefore – we’re pleased that the issue is being brought up and I think that a product recall is very traumatic for any company, so it’s good that the company has bitten the bullet. The issue between the UK and some of its partners – and it’s not an issue specific to this case – is: Do you judge that the case meets threshold tests for a specific form of notificatio?. And it’s – I mean I would say that’s – not a huge big deal, but it’s an issue clearly. And it’s maybe not the first case where this has occurred.

There was a case relating to imports of eggs from other Member States a couple of months back, where equally, in the end it let the UK to take protective action, but they haven’t told anybody about it through the rapid alert system.

ANTHONY GOOCH: I know that once the source is sold here, I suppose the question just from my part is, if there is any impact, in terms of the bottles that are sold at Safeway here in the US.

MR. MADELIN: That’s a question to me?

MR. GOOCH: Yeah, I put it home. (Chuckles.)

MR. MADELIN: The amount – I mean, the amount that’s likely to be there is probably not huge – that doesn’t mean it’s safe. It’s a banned product so it shouldn’t be there at all. The extent of the health hazard you would run if you’ve eaten this stuff is another issues on which frankly, we’ve not done a risk assessment. For us, we don’t need to do a risk assessment of that, this is not approved in the food chain, so as to be withdrawn. It’s a bit the same, I guess, that the US Administration had on Starlink all those years ago, where they would need a double-risk assessment for human consumption, but it just had to get out of the food chain because it wasn’t approved.

This is different – we know it’s dangerous , so it’s a worse case. But we don’t know whether it’s real dangerous in the quantities to be found.

UNIDENTIFIED: Found in the US since 1915.

MR. MADELIN: Mmm-hmm.

MR. GOOCH: Got any more questions or issues, or if there’s anything that you haven’t touched on, Robert, that you wouldn’t want to leave Washington without having raised?

MR. MADELIN: I think that pretty much covers it. But I would just like, although I know that maybe this isn’t the right audience, to come back to this issue of flu and quarantine because it seems to me a really interesting example of how we have no alternative but to do it together. In the case – you know – if you don’t have a common policy on quarantine for travelers out of an effective region in the next flu pandemic, then US authorities will have to regard the rest of the world as being in the affected region. And the amount of disruption that that would impose is clearly a big problem. And the difference between quarantining a South Asian country, along with all the other sort of net importers of travelers, and having to quarantine the rest of the world, because you don’t know where the guys are going from the South Asian country. The difference of disruption is clearly huge.

We all have in our pandemic plans the US, and the EU and the Member States – plans about quarantine and traveler control and so, the next step is to make sure we have the same plans and we’re going to trigger them in a similar way. And that’s going to be – I think – one of the big challenges, as I was saying, about doing better together and getting ahead of the curve.

MR. GOOCH: For your info., there’s a program that’s been aired. I think it’s a program that was originally produced in Europe called "Dirty War," and it’s been aired on yesterday evening, was it? There was a big panel. This was an attack – I think it was a nuclear explosion in London – that this occurs and how it’s handled. And showing out all the problems that emergency services had and the fact that people weren’t really at all prepared to be able to handle these sorts of events. But many people making comments that that would be as applicable, if not more applicable, to the sorts of things that might even be easier to engender, in terms of this sort of terrorism and more – involving more of the bio-terrorism aspect. So it looks like something that’s increasingly high on the agenda and for public opinion in the US, as a concern.

MR. MADELIN: Sure.

MR. GOOCH: So one of the – an issue where Europe and the US work together in the current agenda is probably one that’s going to be very topical.

MR. MADELIN: Yeah.

Q: So I’m just curious while you were here – have you had any conversations about avian flu because there have been a lot of reports in the media here that it could be the next global pandemic, it could become transmissible not only from birds but also from person-to-person. Did you have any discussion on this today or are the EU and US doing anything jointly on this threat?

MR. MADELIN: Yes, I mean the short answer is a huge amount, and I did cover this when I called on Cristina Beato at the Department of Health. As you probably noticed, we have recently set up – this year we have set up – a European CDC, which is not aiming to rival Atlanta’s payroll any time soon. But the purpose of this is to network the health institute capacity in the different Member States, and again to provide a sort of easy way in for cooperation at the global level between the EU health surveillance institutes and their counterparts. So, we are already working with the ECDC, as we call it, Director, Dr. Jakab – who is a Hungarian national who served before in the World Health Organization, as well as in her own country’s services – and Department of Health and the CDC Atlanta, to ensure that we have good cooperation there.

So the first part of the piece is having cooperation between the surveillance systems. And, in a similar spirit, the EU as well as the US, is deploying its epidemiologists and its veterinary experts – for example, in Vietnam at the moment, there is a big conference going on, and we’ve sent people down and I know that the US has as well. On the preparedness front, what do you do when it happens? Again, the agenda is very much the same. What do you do about vaccine stockpiling, vaccine preparation, how do you create a good public/private partnership between government and industry? And the industry is a global industry – at the moment, the US doesn’t have production capacity so it’s going to be buying from somewhere else. Production capacity is inadequate so who’s going to get the stock? The time lag between isolating the new virus and developing the vaccine has to be minimized – how do you do that piece? The other part of preparedness is – as I say – about the management of the normal way of doing business in the world in the face of a pandemic challenge. And there I think having a common response is the ultimate objective. We’re not there yet, but that’s been again, a piece of work for some time now.

And I think going to what Tony has said, a flu pandemic or a bio-terrorist threat is actually the same deal, in terms of how you identify the risk rather quickly. How do you go from people are falling ill to we know what the cause is? And once you’ve identified the cause, whether it’s the next pandemic flu strain or a contagious bio-terror attack, how do you manage that? So there’s quite a lot of work there and both at the agency level, between the EU Commission and US agencies, and at national level, the Member State experts are also, I think, very much in touch with the US on that. (Off-mike.) And we do it not only bilaterally, but in the G-7 and G-8, sure.

MR. GOOCH: Okay, well, if there are no more questions, thank you for coming?

Q: How did the Boeing Airbus talks go?

MR. MADELIN: That I don’t know. (Laughter.) That was my old beat, I’m not on that anymore.

Q: It’s a consumer issue. (Laughter.)

MR. MADELIN: I think the 380 looks prettier. You can quote me on that. (Laughter.)

(END)