Document type: document from the Pour une autre PAC (For another CAP) collective
Preview: The EU has a Common Agricultural Policy, but not a food policy. The CAP is designed for production and not to serve the food demands of our fellow citizens by structuring local production and sales chains, for example, ensuring access to food products for all. The disconnect between farm production and the rest of the sector poses a problem: European farmers are directed towards practices, models and products that do not meet the demands of "foodies" who are sensitive to the quality, taste, distinctiveness, balance and ethics of their food. As a result, European taxpayers partially subsidise a form of production that does not serve them.
This is why Pour un autre PAC (For another CAP) platform hopes to move from a Common Agricultural Policy to a Common Agricultural and Food Policy, and has been working on the inclusion of food since September 2017.
The post-2020 reform is an opportunity to draw up a transitional agricultural and food policy, which should gradually lead the EU towards a more far-reaching revision of this policy by 2030. […]
Sustainable food is chosen, varied, healthy and nutritious, produced as close to home as possible, and its production, processing and distribution channels are respectful of humans, animal welfare, the environment and the climate. […]
The current CAP lacks certain major food-related objectives. It has major shortcomings on environmental health, with regard in particular to the reduction of synthetic chemical inputs, the improvement of water quality and the lack of payments for animal welfare. Alongside other elements in the food chain, it contributes to an imbalance in consumer food choices that results from the imbalance in the types of food that are subsidised and therefore cheaper to buy, with high subsidies for cereals, sugar, meat and milk and very little for pulses, fresh fruit and vegetables. In particular, this leads to over-consumption of products of animal origin that have been are produced intensively and therefore without respect for the welfare of farm animals. […]
On the basis of its analysis of the 2015-2020 CAP, thePour un autre PAC platform has drawn up a first tranche of proposals intended to integrate food into the next CAP revisions.
The proposals aim have five general objectives (of equal importance):
1) The nutritional quality of food products
2) A first step towards access for all to a freely chosen, varied and healthy diet
3) Efforts to create food autonomy at local and regional levels
(4) Respect for the welfare of animals where food is of animal origin
5) European food autonomy while respecting that of countries in the global South.
