European Union Food Scares Stress Farm Reforms, Safety

ERIC R. DROSIN / Dow Jones Newswires 19jan01

LONDON -- A recent rash of food safety scares has many questioning whether the European Union's drive to liberalize its agriculture sector can coexist with its food and health safety standards.

The finger of blame for the likes of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, dioxins, genetically-modified foodstuffs and animal hormones has often been pointed at more intensive and industrial farming practices.

Indeed, the recent resignations of Germany's agriculture and health ministers over their handling of the country's BSE scare -- linked to a fatal brain ailment in humans called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease -- prompted the German government to place blame for the problem on "industrial farming."

The problem is, with the EU continuing to roll out its Agenda 2000 reforms to the Common Agriculture Policy -- as the EU seeks to increase efficiency and reduce dependency on EU handouts -- there is more of the same to come, and consumer groups aren't happy.

Joanna Dober, head of communications at the European Consumers' Organization, says: "A clear shift needs to take place from intensive farming practices toward more sustainable forms of agriculture."

Ms. Dober says governments have "lost the lead" with regards to food safety policy, "as consumers are increasingly guiding safety policies ... and choosing food from sustainable farming methods."

Lorenzo Consoli, the spokesman for Greenpeace's European unit, says the environment group opposes outright the industrialization and intensification of agriculture.

He says it was the deregulation of U.K. laws governing meat and bone meal preparation and production in the 1980s that led to the current BSE crisis.

"Intensive farming means more insecurity over food ... and we think there should be a shift in EU subsidies toward organic farming systems, as this is the model for the future," says Mr. Consoli.

Concerns Stem From Earlier EU Farm Policy

However, despite consumer concern, farm policy makers and analysts say no link exists between deterioating food safety and intensive farming.

"Food safety problems exist because laws aren't properly enforced by EU countries," says one U.S. agriculture official in Brussels. "It's romantic claptrap to argue that non-intensive agriculture produces high-quality, safe products and that higher farm output equates with lower quality food."

Sean Rickard, an economist at the U.K.'s Cranfield University School of Management and a former economist at the U.K.'s National Farmers Union, says EU food safety problems stem largely from the fact that EU farm policy helps "people who without support would have gone out of business a long time ago."

He adds: "The intensification of farming and technical progress has lowered the cost [of food] for consumers."

Market watchers say part of the concern over food safety is that consumers simply aren't prepared to pay for what they perceive to be better quality and safer food.

"The real paradox is that EU citizens demand better safety rules for animals and food, but as a consumer, they want to buy the cheapest product on the market," says Costas Golfidis, an analyst at the Committee of Agricultural Organizations in the EU

EU Sees No Food Safety Issues With Larger Farms

Still, the EU is gradually lowering its direct and indirect support for farmers, not least because of international trade liberalization pressures and World Trade Organization commitments. This has caused protests not only by EU farmers, but also by consumer protection groups worried about the rise of large, profit-motivated agriculture firms.

EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler has repeatedly said total agricultural market support will drop to 21% of the pre-1992 level by 2006, and in 1998, EU payments for export subsidies made up just 9.4% of the total value of agricultural exports, compared with 55% in 1992.

The commission says the trend toward larger farms is a "general pattern, independent of the type of farm policy pursued ... and a main feature of market economies."

Beate Gminder, a commission consumer spokeswoman, says the commission doesn't distinguish between large farms and small farms when it comes to food safety.

"The large-scale production of food isn't dangerous if producers comply with strict EU safety standards," she says.

Despite evidence that the BSE crisis stemmed at least in part from industrial farm practices, including the widespread use of BSE-infected animal feed, Cranfield's Mr. Rickard says: "Any objective study would say that the quality and variety of food produced by modern farming is better than 40-50 years ago."