World Animal Protection Nederland
Verbeteren van dierenwelzijn door middel van beleidsbeïnvloeding, campagnes en kennisontwikkeling.
ID: 266391837636-70
Lobbying Activity
Response to Farm to Fork Strategy
13 Mar 2020
Staying within the safe operating space for food systems requires a combination of substantial shifts toward mostly plant-based dietary patterns, dramatic reductions in food losses and waste, and major improvements in food production practices. So far, EU policies, and in particular the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), favour large-scale industrial animal production which is detrimental to the climate, biodiversity, public health and animal welfare. Societal costs are not accounted for in the price of animal derived products and policy coherence is lacking. EU agricultural policies have failed to substantially reduce greenhouse gas and nitrogen emissions; to sufficiently protect biodiversity and safeguard animal welfare; and to achieve healthy diets. The Farm to Fork Strategy provides an unique, timely and crucial opportunity to transform European food systems and set a new course for the sake of people, animals and the planet.
Proposed actions:
- Set binding targets to reduce the EU’s meat, egg, dairy and fish consumption. A reduction of 50% of animal-based foods by 2030 is warranted. To this end, a shift towards the consumption of plant proteins should also be stimulated, including by prioritising sea vegetables when promoting the consumption of seafood. Additionally, the development and consumption of cultured meat should be promoted by facilitating application and acceptance processes for companies.
- Encourage a fair meat price, by introducing sustainability charges on meat, including True Cost Accounting for GHG-emissions, biodiversity loss and animal welfare. Revenues should support farmers to transition to sustainable, high animal welfare production and consumers to transition to healthy, mostly plant-based diets. Moving animal source products from low VAT tariffs to high VAT tariffs can be considered a first step.
- Introduce mandatory method-of-production labelling (substantiated by key animal-based indicators) on animal source foods, starting with poultry meat by revising the EU Regulation 543/2008.
- Promote higher welfare farming systems by accelerating the process of phasing out cages and painful procedures, transitioning to higher welfare breeds, providing enrichment and implementing lower stocking densities. Given the link between antimicrobial use and animal welfare, this enables a revision of the Council Directive 98/58/EC to obtain a 50% reduction (compared to the current level) in the use of veterinary antibiotics by 2030.
- Support climate-smart transportation by eliminating the long and very long distance (≥ 8 hours) transport of live animals by 2022. Thus, favour the transport of meat and carcassess as well as embryos and semen. The target is to lower transport-related CO2 emissions by 50%. To this end, revise the EU Regulation (EC) 1/2005 to eliminate all the provisions that allow long- and very long-distance journeys.
- Help producers in shifting to sustainable systems by revising the EU Regulation No. 1151/2012 to ensure compliance with higher welfare standards on farm as well as during transport and slaughter.
- Develop a set of EU principles on sustainable sourcing, enabling predominantly plant-based diets and seeking supply commitments for sourcing animal-based products coming from animals raised and slaughter under higher welfare standards.
- Only grant further trade preferences for animal-based products in trade agreements upon the condition that they respect all EU relevant animal welfare standards, including standards currently not applied to imported products (“conditional liberalisation”).
- Ensure policy coherence, including for policies aimed at the financial sector. Banks and investors underpin the current unsustainable food production and consumption systems. Policy instruments such as the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities need to be geared towards a shift to predominantly plant-based diets and sustainable, high welfare livestock production.
Read full response