diff --git a/bin/slubsipbuilderbagit.pl b/bin/slubsipbuilderbagit.pl
index 401ceee5ebee865ff700c71bbd6e0974e134dbf3..9ffec9a8141b33e505df9caff3518e52f2c666f4 100644
--- a/bin/slubsipbuilderbagit.pl
+++ b/bin/slubsipbuilderbagit.pl
@@ -90,8 +90,6 @@ MODS
         if($with_debug){
             SLUB::LZA::SIPBuilderBagIt::write_file("DEBUG_${ppn}_mods.xml", $mods);
         }
-        # remove the <xml /> from beginning of the answer
-        $mods=~ s#<\?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"\?>#<!-- removed xml header from mods part -->#;
 
         return $mods;
     }