Our Key Priorities presented to M. Olivér Várhelyi, Commissioner for Health & Animal Welfare

After their meeting with Commissioner for Agriculture and Food, Christophe Hansen, yesterday, Luc Vernet, Secretary General of Farm Europe, and Paolo Di Stefano, Executive Director of Eat Europe, met with Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare, Olivér Várhelyi, today. 

They discussed opening a collaborative effort to build a new agenda for agriculture and food. 

“At the start of this new political mandate, we urge the EU to slow down processes that have been initiated or revived without scientific support — such as warning labels, punitive taxation on wine, or the approval of new lab-grown products. At the same time, we must accelerate the initiatives that are genuinely needed, including innovations like NGTs to enhance sustainability and productivity, as well as biocontrol measures that provide farmers — along with a more realistic approach to PPPs—with effective tools to safeguard their investments from the risks posed by pests and diseases. Additionally, we must prioritize consumer protection, including with a clear approach to meat denominations and the provision of transparent information to consumers.”

This meeting also provided the opportunity to present the Roadmap on Agriculture and Food developed by Farm Europe, which also table proposals for future nutrition and health policies. 

It also marked the beginning of a constructive dialogue on the future of animal welfare policies, which must be aligned with the competitiveness of the EU’s livestock sector, both within Europe and globally. 

In our Roadmap for agriculture and food, we emphasize the following points regarding nutrition and health policies:

• The European Union must maintain its high standards for human health and the quality of its food supply chain, which begins with the high sanitary standards at the farm gate. These standards must also apply to imported products. Controls on imports must be strengthened and certification rules be more robust.
• The protein plan for Europe should not be in a collision course with the livestock sector, but on the contrary build on the complementarity between arable and livestock farming. This plan should refrain from promoting plant-based alternatives narratives or synthetic food alternatives. In recent years, certain capital-intensive players, supported by pressure groups, have sought to push for the production of synthetic proteins as a supposedly unquestionable sustainability benefit to replace animal proteins (e.g., dairy proteins, meat). A comprehensive, evidence-based debate is needed, considering ethical and environmental aspects, rather than relying on simplistic statements based on inconclusive science.

Regarding Non-Communicable Diseases and the EU’s Beating Cancer Plan, the need to address the real, scientifically backed concerns was highlighted. The EU should focus on the actual issue of rising consumption of ultra-processed products — an issue notably absent from these key EU strategies — rather than undermining the wine sector with a punitive approach that ignores consumption behaviours and scientifically proven health benefits.