Multistakeholder group European Livestock Voice has flagged up nine contradictions in the Farm To Fork strategy. Leather industry body COTANCE is one of the signatories of a joint statement highlighting these nine “paradoxes”. 

In December 2019, the European Commission published a document to explain a set of policy initiatives it calls The European Green Deal, which has the aim of “resetting” the organisation’s commitment to tackling climate and environment-related challenges. The document describes such an undertaking as “this generation’s defining task”. Six months later, it launched Farm To Fork, saying this strategy was “at the heart of the Green Deal”. It said: “The Farm to Fork Strategy is a new comprehensive approach to how Europeans value food sustainability. It is an opportunity to improve lifestyles, health, and the environment.”

What’s not to like? The problem for COTANCE and the other signatories of the joint statement, which include representatives of livestock farming, meat production, dairy and the promotion of rural economies is not that the strategy calls for the food system to integrate further measures to improve sustainability. It is not that it wants these measures to come in as fast as possible and without any compromise on food standards or food affordability. It’s not that Farm To Fork says reversing obesity rates across the EU by 2030 is critical.

Synthetic solutions

Statements in the Farm To Fork strategy document that draw links between meat and the environmental and health problems the food industry needs to confront have gone down less well. It says, for example: “Moving to a more plant-based diet with less red and processed meat and with more fruits and vegetables will reduce not only risks of life-threatening diseases, but also the environmental impact of the food system.” It goes on to call for increased research into synthetic meat substitute products and the use of insects as a replacement source of protein, almost as though the strategy ought to be called Laboratory To Fork.

And this apparent snub of farms is the point. COTANCE and its fellow signatories complain that a comprehensive impact assessment would have been the appropriate way to engage in a concrete discussion on all these subjects. Their joint statement insists that individual studies on the different objectives of the strategy would not be sufficient. Instead, they want there to be an assessment of the whole plan, with cross-checking across the Farm To Fork proposals to determine what impact each will have, collectively, across farming and food production. “Such a study was promised by European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans,” the joint statement reads. “We now know that such an assessment will not be carried out.”

Common sense

COTANCE and its fellow signatories continue: “We are asking for the application of three common sense principles.” The first of these is to have a policy based on concrete data and scientific evidence, “not on ideology and political stances”. Number two is to start talking about concrete tools and technologies, capable of creating a bit of enthusiasm in the farming community for the project. Principle number three is to make sure the requirements EU farmers and food companies have to meet apply equally to trade partners outside the 27 European states that make up the bloc.

The signatories insist there are nine areas of the Farm To Fork strategy in particular that need clarifying. It calls these “the nine paradoxes”. They stem from “the preconception that meat is not sustainable for the environment or our health”. They point out that livestock farms have made great advances in recent years and now use fewer resources, but say many consumers remain unaware of these improvements because they live in cities and may never have seen a farm at close quarters. It is this disconnect that has given rise to the nine “paradoxes”. They have produced a short video animation to make clear what the nine errors are.

Paradox upon paradox

The first of these is the doubt that seems to exist in the minds of the authors of the Farm To Fork strategy about the benefits of animal protein as part of people’s diets. Eating meat is an efficient way for us to consume in a few calories all nine essential amino acids, along with 16 vitamins and minerals and 10 bioactive compounds. Easy access to these nutrients through eating meat is what has helped human beings become the intelligent species we are today, the groups behind the joint statement say.

Next, they take issue with the suggestion in the EU’s Farm To Fork strategy document that livestock farming takes up too much land, 68% of the EU’s total agricultural land. “It’s not true that livestock farming takes valuable land away from crops for human consumption,” they insist. “In Europe, the land used for farming and grazing has remained almost constant for the last 60 years, while the [human] population has grown by 125 million and the average life-span has lengthened by about ten years to reach almost 80 years of age.” They argue that raising animals is complementary to human life because the animals have a diet based on plants that people cannot eat, including crop residues, grass and hay, and convert the cellulose in these foodstuffs into proteins of high biological value that we can eat.

Protect the land

Paradox number three for the authors of the joint statement is the suggestion in Farm To Fork that moving away from red meat in our diets will be good for the environmental impact of food systems. “Where there is livestock production, there are people who are invested in protecting the land,” the video animation says. Their work prevents the land from being abandoned and prevents “hydrogeological instability” and the loss of biodiversity. The organisations behind the joint statement go on to say: “Meat is, increasingly, the scapegoat when it comes to CO2 emissions, but, in Europe, livestock are responsible for 7.2% of greenhouse gas emissions.” Paradoxically, the elephant in the room here is not animals. It is the consumption of fossil fuels that are responsible for between 85% and 90% of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe, including energy consumption for industry, the residential sector and transport. The video points out that a return flight from Brussels to Rome would equate to greenhouse gas emissions of 500 kilos of CO2-equivalent for each person on board. If each of these people consumed meat moderately for one year, the carbon emissions relating to the meat they eat would be 400 kilos of CO2-equivalent.

Number four in the list of paradoxes is the economy. COTANCE and its partners see in the Farm To Fork strategy hints that the European Commission wants to downsize the European livestock sector. They point out that this could lead to importing meat from other parts of the world, in which meat production has a greater impact on the climate. “The economic impact of imports also needs to be accounted for,” they say. “The livestock is inter-connected with dozens of other sectors [including leather and leather products]. Reducing this sector [livestock] means putting other sectors in crisis.”

Keep livestock, lose chemicals

Next, the groups behind the joint statement address the paradoxes of animal welfare and fertilisers. They make the point that standards for animal welfare in Europe are among the highest in the world and, because this is something European consumers care about deeply, maintaining livestock production in Europe is a way of offering them reassurance. Farm To Fork lays out clearly the ambition to cut fertiliser use in Europe by at least 20% by 2030 and to have at least 25% of the EU’s agricultural land under organic farming within the same timeframe. The paradox here is that manure from livestock should be an important part of any strategy to keep soil fertile without the use of chemicals. “Less livestock means less natural fertiliser, more chemicals and more desertification,” the video animation says.

The focus of paradox number seven is employment. “On average, each livestock farm guarantees seven jobs in rural areas,” the video says. Decreasing the number of livestock farms would make the challenge of addressing unemployment and depopulation in rural areas even more difficult. But Farm To Fork says that, even as societies become more urbanised, people want to feel closer to their food. “They want food that is fresh, less processed and sustainably sourced.

And the calls for shorter supply chains have intensified during the current [covid-19] outbreak,” the strategy document says. It talks about enhancing the resilience of local and regional food systems and strengthening the position of farmers, for example through increased insistence on geographical indications to make it clear to consumers where food products come from. “This objective clashes with the globalisation of ultra-processed and synthetic food, made with no territorial identity or cultural heritage,” say the authors of the joint statement in presenting paradox number eight.

Feed the world

Bringing the list of paradoxes to a close is the subject of food security. Between now and 2050, the global population will increase by more than 2 billion, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. There will be many more mouths to feed and, on top of that, 70% of people in the world will live in cities. A much smaller section of the population will have to manage agricultural production to feed the world. “Based on this, it is more reasonable to support and appreciate livestock farms rather than denigrate them,” the signatories say. They add that, in the context of The European Green Deal, European Commission leaders would do well to acknowledge the advantage their part of the world has built up in livestock production and in agriculture more generally. “It would be unforgivable to waste this advantage,” they say. “There is a need to produce more with fewer resources and the livestock system is ready to play its role.” 

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