Presse-Echo zur Europäischen Frühstückswoche unter der Schirmherrschaft von Christa Klaß
5th annual Breakfast Week held in Brussels
CEEREAL is pleased to announce that its fifth annual “Breakfast Week”, sponsored by Christa Klass MEP, was held on the 29-30 September 2009 in the European Parliament. This year’s event again proved popular amongst the numerous European Parliament and Brussels community stakeholders who attended.
Breakfast Week is part of CEEREAL’s long-standing commitment to keeping all European stakeholders informed about the importance of healthy breakfast habits, and the ongoing contribution the breakfast cereal and oat milling industries are making within the areas of nutrition and health.
Christa Klass MEP stated that: “In addition to providing Parliamentarians and the Brussels policy making community with a tasty and filling start to the working day, Breakfast Week is an important reminder of the role that breakfast cereals play in improving the diet and nutritional status of Europeans. It also promotes a positive dialogue between breakfast cereal manufacturers and the European Union policy and decision-makers.”
Speaking at the event, Jean-Jacques Caspari, President CEEREAL, stated that: “Although Breakfast Week is a fun and enjoyable event, and has become a real fixture on the European Parliamentary calendar, it also has a very serious purpose. Breakfast Week serves to reconfirm the commitment of CEEREAL and its members to advancing Europe’s health and nutrition agenda through our support for initiatives such as the EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity & Health.”
Lydia Midness, Vice President CEEREAL, added that: “We are delighted at the continued success of Breakfast Week. More and more policy makers now understand the benefits of cereals as a source of fibre and a nutrient packed, easy to prepare food.”
Brussels Blog – Breakfast gossip, nefarious interventions and lonely voices on GM…
30 September 2009
3:30pm Wednesday 30th September – Katy Lee, Parliamentary and Communications Coordinator
It’s ‘Breakfast Week’ at the European Parliament and with so many MEP meetings planned for the UK NFUs an extra helping of cereal (chocolate wheat flakes, today) was very welcome as brain fuel!
Funnily enough my breakfast was ‘sponsored’ by a German Conservative MEP, Christa Klass, who lent UK farmers and growers a huge hand of support this year during negotiations on the EU pesticides thematic strategy. This morning she has again proved to be a woman full of good ideas!
As we caught up over our cereal (see picture), she wanted to know if I had an idea of who might follow Mariann Fischer Boel as the next EU Agriculture Commissioner, as well as expressing her distaste at the soya milk that was being served – this being against the interests of her German dairy farmers for whom she is fighting at the moment!
With the Presidents of the UK National Farmers’ Unions in town to see the heads of other European farming organisations, there has been demand from parliamentarians for meetings.
So I left the NFU Scotland presidential team in the capable hands of MEPs Struan Stevenson, Alyn Smith, Ian Hudghton, and George Lyon (sheep EID, animal transport and the LFA review on the agenda, no doubt).
Meanwhile I took notes at the parliament’s Agriculture Committee, where there were the usual nefarious interventions from certain MEPs on things like dairy quotas and increased market meddling from the EU institutions.
To this backdrop the UK MEPs did us proud. Four out of sixteen MEPs to speak out on the dairy crisis were from the UK. Throughout this discussion and a later one on prices for farmers they gave clear messages and ones supportive of the NFU.
That’s not to say they all had the same approach. Richard Ashworth gave a characteristically intellectual argument on the gap between producer and consumer prices, George Lyon echoing the sentiment.
Robert Sturdy and Alyn Smith prioritised domestic food sovereignty, the former giving the commission rather a hard time.
Stuart Agnew and Diane Dodds were lone and courageous voices in calling for a more practical GM threshold for imported animal feed, despite the infamously anti-science stance of some in the audience.
Then of course there was Jim Nicholson, who left us in no doubt that he was there to represent the interests of Northern Ireland before anything else.