Campaign Highlights Food, farming and nature
‘Meat Atlas’ exposes devastating industry
Our trailblazing Meat Atlas revealed the ties between European meat consumption, industrial animal farming, and the global climate and biodiversity crises.
Our trailblazing Meat Atlas revealed the ties between European meat consumption, industrial animal farming, and the global climate and biodiversity crises. The publication showed how industrial animal farming is responsible for up to 21% of climate-damaging emissions. It also exposed how 20 meat and dairy firms emit more greenhouse gas than Germany, Britain or France.
The comprehensive and graphical report, produced together with Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, hit the headlines worldwide. It generated more than 350 media articles in 35 countries. It underscored our call for a transition to nature-friendly food and farming in the EU Farm to Fork Strategy and other policies.
More than 1 million signatures for bees and farmers
1.2 million citizens signed the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) ‘Save bees and farmers’. The petition calls on the EU institutions to phase-out synthetic pesticides by 2035, to restore biodiversity, and to support farmers in their transition to environmentally-friendly farming practices.
This success was the result of intense mobilisation from a cross-sector alliance of civil society organisations covering the environment, health, farming and beekeeping. With this broad coalition, and over a million citizen’s voices, we now ask the European Commission and Parliament to turn the campaign’s demands into law.
Keeping (new) GMOs out off our fields and off our plates
Debate over the deregulation of a new generation of GMOs remained strong this past year. As the European Commission prepared a new consultation which could result in the rewriting of EU GMO laws, we were heavily critical of the study it released suggesting that current GMO legislation was ‘not fit for purpose’. We published an investigation showing the Commission’s study was biased towards biotech companies and pointing to the industry’s sustained campaign to win exemptions for new GMOs from safety checks.
Together with 161 other organisations, we wrote to Vice-President Timmermans to call on the Commission to keep GM food risk-assessed, traceable and labelled. This is to protect the rights of farmers and consumers to choose what they plant and eat. We published briefings setting-out why new GMOs won’t help fight climate change and what lies beneath big agribusiness’ push for deregulation. Opinion is still divided between ministries and countries, and we continue to build-up the movement for a GMO-free Europe.
The European Commission promised a sustainable food system with its Farm to Fork strategy, but it seems to be trying to let in a new generation of genetically-modified crops onto our fields and plates without safety checks and labelling.
in EUObserver.
Our Campaigns
Future of Europe
Climate justice and energy
Corporate power
Food, farming and nature
Resource justice
