European Commissioner for Food Safety Stella Kyriakides tried in Strasbourg to ease the dissatisfaction in the European Parliament about ‘studies’ on the consequences of the new Farm to Fork food strategy. Some MEPs accuse the Commission of deliberately withholding the publication of an ‘unfavorable’ JRC report for a long time.
The relevant JRC document is not an impact study at all, but a report that addresses ‘only a few aspects’ of the strategy, said the Cypriot Kyriakides. Agricultural federations and several Agriculture ministers have insisted from the start on a ‘comprehensive analysis,’ a so-called assessment.
Sources within the European Commission emphasize informally in Strasbourg that such an AI-assessment is only carried out for concrete, legally binding laws, not for general, broad-oriented strategy notes. Those agricultural federations know that, it is added.
And what is the alternative of the ‘AGRI fans?’ is being asked. Because continuing business as usual is not an option, everyone knows that. It only leads to more loss of biodiversity, more individual farmers struggling within the food system, and more industrially unhealthy food.
The resistance to Farm to Fork also underestimates the farmers themselves, because the studies apparently assume that farmers will stop innovating. And if there is one group of farmers in Europe at the forefront in this, it is the Dutch farmers. Farm to Fork, together with the new CAP, actually offers farmers new opportunities, a Commission staff member in Brussels recently revealed.
Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans, who is in China this week for a UN environmental summit, sent a ‘last-minute note’ on Monday. This contains a comparison between the different reports. One of these was commissioned by two European organizations of manufacturers of chemical pesticides.
The overview shows that negative effects on current agricultural production were indeed considered, but in most cases positive effects on climate, animal welfare, and food safety were not.
Commissioner Kyriakides made clear that soon, for each legislative proposal arising from the food strategy, a genuine impact study will indeed be conducted, said the Cypriot.