Each member of the European Parliament gets 4 342 euros every month, mainly to fund an office in their own country. But offices for 249 MEPs do not exist or seem nowhere to be found. So far 133 out of the 748 current parliamentarians told what they pay in office rent, an investigation shows. Each MEP receives a so-called General Expenditure Allowance (GEA), costing the EU around €40 million annually. It is intended to provide for national offices, but following research by journalists at ‘The MEPs Project,’ it seems the funds are potentially being misused.
Pigs infected with the superbug MRSA can be freely imported into the UK due to regulatory loopholes, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveal. An investigation has established that there is no mandatory screening for live breeding pigs leaving Denmark – where MRSA is rife throughout the country’s herd – and entering the UK. Experts are warning that if no action is taken, the UK’s pig herd could rapidly become infected. Such an epidemic could have a serious impact on human health, according to leading Danish microbiologist and MRSA expert, Professor Hans Jørn Kolmos. Thousands of people have contracted the livestock-associated strain of MRSA in Denmark and six have died from it in the last five years.
In Denmark, there are more than twice as many pigs as humans, and twice as many antibiotics given to the animals as well. A perfect breeding ground for resistant bacteria – to which politics have failed to respond.
In November 2013, a 63-year-old man with diabetes and end-stage kidney got fever because of inflammation. Samples of blood grew the resistant pig-bacteria, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, CC398. Three weeks later the man died.
Revisorer har konstateret udbredt bilagsfusk med EU-midler i en række projekter i Videncenter for Svineproduktion. Fødevareministeriet har for et halvt år siden i stilhed lukket sagen uden at anmelde den til bagmandspolitiet eller EU, og ministeriet har valgt kun at undersøge en meget begrænset del af centrets projekter. Efter at der har været lukket for pengekassen i to år, må Seges, som centret hedder i dag, igen modtage EU-støtte. Straks alarmen lød fra Deloitte, trådte direktør Søren Gade i karakter. Revisionsfirmaet havde meddelt, at der var konstateret “væsentlige fejl” i et projektregnskab i Videncenter for Svineproduktion (VSP).
Er du svineproducent og søger MRSA-frie avlsdyr, så kommer her den første liste nogensinde over virksomheder, hvis svin officielt er testet af myndighederne og fundet rene. Søger man arbejde i landbruget, kan listen bruges til at finde virksomheder med styr på det bakterielle arbejdsmiljø. For leverandører, naboer og lokalbefolkningen omkring svinevirksomhederne på listen rummer den også åben og ærlig besked om smitteforholdene, sådan som Fødestyrelsen undersøgte dem i 2014. Se listen over de 82 svinefarme
Der er tale om 82 større svinefabrikker, der enten producerer smågrise til videresalg eller slagtesvin. Sammen med 196 andre blev deres dyr grundigt testet i 2014 for den smittefarlige stafylokok, der er kendt unden betegnelsen MRSACC398.
Most of the Danish Members of the European Parliament refuse to reveal their records concerning how they make use of EU-funds. A request for access to all their invoices has been denied by the European Parliament. The matter has been brought to light by two Danish journalists, Peter Jeppesen, Ekstra Bladet, and Nils Mulvad, Investigative Reporting Denmark, as part of an EU-wide collaboration, in looking at the refusals from the Parliament to the EU Court of Justice. On top of their monthly salaries, MEPs receive about 32,000 DKK monthly in so-called pencil money. This is equivalent to 4,300 Euro.
Journalists from all over Europe have asked the EU-court to rule on the hidden records of parliamentarians’ allowances. The 29 journalists representing all EU member countries have come together in a simultaneous complaint over the Parliament to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. The group called The MEPs Project (MEP – Member of European Parliament) consists of individuals who have all tried to get access to documentation of how the elected politicians from their respective country use their allowances. That is money given for different reasons on top of the salaries. All in all the accounts for 751 parliamentarian’s allowances have been asked for.
ByFiona Harvey, Mary Carson, Maggie O'Kane and Andrew Wasley |
The discovery on UK shelves of pork contaminated with a livestock strain of MRSA prompts calls to curb misuse of antibiotics in intensive farming. Pork sold by several leading British supermarkets has been found to be contaminated with a strain of the superbug MRSA that is linked to the overuse of powerful antibiotics on factory farms, a Guardian investigation has revealed. Livestock-associated MRSA CC398, which originates in animals, has been found in pork products sold in Sainsbury’s, Asda, the Co-operative and Tesco. Of the 100 packets of pork chops, bacon and gammon tested by the Guardian, nine – eight Danish and one Irish – were found to have been infected with CC398. CC398 in meat, which poses little risk to the British public, can be transmitted by touching infected meat products or coming into contact with contaminated livestock or people, although it can be killed through cooking.
The threat of MRSA in hospitals has generated an urgent response, but an MRSA variant is spreading from farm livestock to supermarket meat unchecked.
MRSA is best known in the UK for causing hospital-acquired infections – and many deaths. There has been little human to human transmission of the superbug in the community, but it is particularly dangerous in hospitals because it can colonise wounds easily, especially where patients’ immunity is low. It has been associated with poor hygiene in hospitals, but the main factor behind the spread of MRSA has been the over-prescription of antibiotics, which has allowed a rather mundane germ that lives on many of our bodies without causing any problems to become far more dangerous to human health. CC398, a new variant of MRSA, emerged in animals and is found in intensively farmed animals (primarily pigs, but also cows and chickens), from where it can be transmitted to humans.
Less than 1 percent of farmers have in the course of a year been fined, compared with the estimated level of 5-10 percent of farmers to be fined, when the Danish Parliament in the autumn 2010 decided to minimize the use of antibiotics to pigs by introducing a yellow scheme with fines to farmers for heavy use of antibiotics.
See the discussion in the Danish parliament on the decision of yellow scheme. All together since the introduction of yellow scheme there have been 130 cases of fines giving to farmers according to documents which Investigative Reporting Denmark has obtained, with names of all the farmers getting a fine. Excel-file with all data on 130 cases of yellow scheme
Original documents showing fines to farmers:
Yellow scheme in 2011
Yellow scheme in 2012
Yellow scheme in 2013
Yellow scheme in 2014
According to the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration only 0.3 to 0.8 pct of the farms received a yellow scheme in the years from 2011-2014, during which the system has been in effect. The documents also show only 2 farmers instead of an estimated 200 received an increased fine and surveillance and no one received a red scheme or had their number of pigs reduced. Authorities claim that this result is because of the success of the system.
