IDM ¦ Column
“Farm to Fork Strategy” &
“European Green Deal”
A coherent dairy approach
Author: Alexander Anton, EDA Secretary General
The European Commission went
public in December 2019 with
its “European Green Deal” –
the overarching political guideline
for Europe to become the
first climate neutral continent by 2050.
With a two months delay because of
the covid crisis, In May 2020, the European
Commission released its “Farm to
Fork” Strategy that is meant to translate
the overall climate and environmental
ambition for the agri-food sector.
“A fair, healthy and environmentally
friendly food system” as the subtitle of
the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy reads.
Launched as part of the Green Deal
package, the strategy claims to aim at
‘strengthening the sustainability of the
food sector, covering all the stages of
the food chain and ensuring that all actors
actively contribute to the transition’.
The strategy encompasses key subjects
for the food systems such as healthy
and sustainable diets, consumer information,
promotion programmes for agricultural
products and food in schools, a
push for more organic production area,
pesticides and fertilisers use restrictions
and reduction of food waste.
“We believe European dairy farming
is part of the solution and we are
committed to speeding up the transition
28 · June/July 2020 ¦ international-dairy.com
to sustainable dairy,” underlined
Peder Tuborgh, the CEO of Arla Foods.
This commitment is shared by the European
dairy industry - we fully subscribe
to the overall ambition of the Green Deal
and the Farm to Fork strategy.
And we did not wait for the European
Commission to come up with their
strategy: at global level, not least within
the Dairy Sustainability Framework (DSF)
and at European level, for instance with
our Dairy Product Environmental Footprint
(Dairy-PEF) project, we are already
in the implementation phase.
F2F – a new boost
for dairy sustainability?
The F2F strategy was officially presented
by the n° 2 of our ‘European government’,
Mr Frans Timmermans with his
impressive title “Executive Vice President
of the European Commission for the European
Green Deal and Climate Action”,
and Stella Kiriakides, EU Commissioner
for Health and Food Safety.
The absence of the EU Commissioner
for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski at
the launch of the F2F strategy was heavily
criticised.
What is much worse, is the absence
of a coherent agricultural approach
within the strategy, that includes an ‘action
plan’ with 27 legislative actions for
the time 2020 – 2024.
The F2F paper is characterized by its
incompleteness, its competing objectives
and incoherent proposals.
Yes, we are deceived: this is not
the one and coherent strategy for the
whole agri-food sector that will boost
dairy sustainability.
The transition towards a European
sustainable dairy & food system is needed
now more than ever and the dairy sector
will play a key role in this transformation.
Sustainable dairy livestock production
will allow EU consumers to benefit from
healthy and nutritious products, while at
the same time reducing the negative impacts
on the environment and climate. We
are also committed to continue providing
nutritious, safe, and affordable products
to the European and world market.
The European Commission wants to
achieve the objective to shift towards
‘healthier and more sustainable diets’ by
‘simple’ measures such as setting up nutrient
profiles to restrict the promotion of
foods high in fat, sugar and salt and proposing
harmonised mandatory front-ofpack
nutrition labelling to ‘enable consumers
to make health conscious food choices’.
The nutritional value of milk & dairy cannot
be reflected in these simplistic schemes.
/international-dairy.com
