The EU’s Farm to Fork policy just took another hit.
The European Commission is quietly planning to scale back long-touted animal welfare reforms around food production, a leak to the Financial Times revealed after an internal EU report suggested that prices could rise 15% directly due to the new measures.
One of the few remaining pillars of the Green New Deal left unscathed, Brussels had intended to ban the systematic killing of day-old male chicklets, the caging of many types of livestock, and to clamp down on fur production in what Eurocrats intended to become a landmark legislative moment for animal rights.
EU sources speaking anonymously to the Financial Times attested that there was no internal consensus whether the Commission wished to dump the reforms entirely or merely to scale them back during these final few months before next year’s European elections.
The move away from animal welfare is directly motivated by continued food inflation caused by the Ukrainian war, with Eurostat figures showing an 11.9% jump in food inflation in 2022 alone. Many pundits expect a backlash against EU green policies at the ballot box.
Officials at the Commission also expressed additional concern about the regulatory effect on imports. The new regulations are likely to prohibit poultry imports from countries outside the bloc unable to conform with the new rules—including Ukraine.
The European food market is currently struggling to adapt to de facto wartime conditions as the Russian blockade in the Black Sea and universal reduction of tariffs on Ukrainian foodstuffs set prices out of kilter around the continent.
The gradual phasing out of factory farming and the transition to sustainable agriculture were two major pillars of the European Green Deal launched in 2019. Since then, the EU’s resolve has been blunted by various international crises and growing disunity as conservative MEPs turn their backs on the Green New Deal to steal the thunder of populists ahead of next year’s European elections.
While member states have some degree of discretion in setting food safety standards, the EU is the primary European regulator in setting production and quality rules, although production standards remain a point of contention in the bloc’s trade deals. Meat production in particular is a major topic in the ongoing strained EU-Latin American dialogue to revive the Mercosur free trade agreement, as many European farmers fear a flood of cheap imports.
