The European Commission released its Vision for Agriculture and Food on 19 February 2025, brushing aside the thoughtful work of a months-long multi-stakeholder dialogue that the Commission convened a year ago. Although the Vision claims it wants to reduce polarisation, it reinforces it by focussing excessively on production and ignoring consumption, almost completely failing to take up any of the Dialogues’ recommendations about subjects affecting consumers, unhealthy diets or unaffordable food.
Over the course of 2024, against a backdrop of farmer demonstrations, the Commission convened a Strategic Dialogue on the Future of EU Agriculture, which brought together an inclusive group of agriculture stakeholders (FW 292). The diverse stakeholders deliberated until they reached a set of Recommendations that they could agree unanimously – a feat in itself – among them, that the EU needs to “re-balance towards plant-based options and help consumers to embrace the transition” (FW 298).
This echoes what civil society have been saying for years. According to the Commission, livestock is responsible for 81-86% of greenhouse gas emissions generated by EU farming – disproportionately high, compared to the share of calories that meat provides in European diets. European meat consumption is also driving deforestation in other parts of the world: an area the size of Austria in South America produces soy just for the EU, and nearly all of this is for animal feed. European soy imports have been one of the top drivers of the Amazon destruction that has occurred over the past decades.
In addition to avoiding such environmental harm, a shift towards more plant-based diets would have tremendous knock-on health benefits for Europeans and provide monetary savings for governments. Member States currently spend EUR 280 billion every year on cardiovascular diseases (CVD) – five times the amount spent on the Common Agricultural Policy. Half of the years lost to CVD (either from disability or early death) are linked to over-consumption of red and processed meat, salts and fats, and under-consumption of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and pulses. Recent research shows that applying health and environmental guidelines to ready-made meals could have a significant impact on driving down this cost.
Common sense would suggest seizing such low-hanging fruit, but the Commission’s Vision makes no mention at all of supporting consumers to access more plant-based foods.
For all the talk of lightening farmers’ burdens, the Vision devises a complicated solution to sustainability challenges in the agricultural sector: payments linked to carbon or nature ‘credits’ (offsets). Certifying carbon or biodiversity for the purposes of offsetting is both bureaucratic and burdensome for small landowners, and ineffective in terms of sustainability. For two decades, NGOs have highlighted the practical failures of certification and of fictitious ‘offsets’ of all types (FW 283; FW 290); so have international journalists and a broad, collaborative investigation.
The Vision’s main positive aspect is its commitment to stopping farmers from having to sell their goods below the cost it took them to produce. It is important that non-European farmers producing goods for the EU – such as cocoa farmers in West Africa – also benefit from such measures.
How many times can we opt for the same non-solutions before we admit that a new approach – such as the one outlined in the Strategic Dialogue recommendations – is needed? The Commission must redress balance within the different processes kicked off by the Vision, including the European Board on Agricultural and Food and the Protein Diversification Strategy.
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Categories: News, Forest Watch, Meat consumption