The time to rethink trade is now!
The EU’s current agri-trade policy is unfair and unsustainable. But there are opportunities for change. Read all about it in our new report!
Our new report is out!
There is no better time to rethink the EU’s current agri-trade policy. Recent U.S. election results have revealed the sudden vulnerability in the European Union’s global position. With Donald Trump threatening new tariffs and trade restrictions on Europe, the risks of the EU relying on third countries for its plant protein supply have become painfully clear. At the same time, the controversy surrounding the EU-Mercosur trade deal has laid bare the stark consequences of current trade agreements: negative impacts on farmers’ livelihoods due to unfair competition and environmental harm. This deal alone could trigger between 620,000 and 1.35 million hectares of deforestation over just five years, driven by expanded beef production in the Mercosur region.
As one of the largest global markets and one of the world’s most outward-oriented economies, the EU plays a key role in influencing global food trade. However, our new report ‘Trading Away the Future? How the EU’s agri-food policy is at odds with sustainability goals’ reveals how the EU’s current agri-trade policy is undermining global and EU sustainability goals in five key areas:
- The climate crisis: The livestock sector is a major barrier to the EU meeting its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement and the European Green Deal: in the EU, emissions from the livestock sector are responsible for 81-86% of the block’s total agricultural GHG emissions. This sector is maintained by an abundant supply of imported soy. In 2022, the EU imported nearly 30 million tonnes of soy, amounting to 93% of total consumption. Nearly all of this is used to produce the 150 million tonnes of feed required to sustain the EU livestock sector, making it “a key enabler of mass-produced meat and dairy products”.
- Public health: The EU maintains stringent regulations on pesticide residues in agricultural products. However, pesticides banned or not approved in the EU can return to European consumers through imported soy and rapeseed, used in turn to feed cattle that EU citizens consume. In Brazil, soy is the most pesticide-intensive crop, and Brazil is the EU’s main supplier of soy. A human biomonitoring survey conducted between 2014 and 2021 found that 84% of samples from the bodies of children and adults across five European countries contained residues of two or more pesticides.
- Food security and EU farmers’ livelihoods: Today, one-third of globally produced calories are used to feed livestock; producing this feed requires three-quarters of agricultural land under cultivation. The EU has a major deficit in vegetable proteins due to high demand from its livestock sector, which cannot be met domestically. This reliance on imports from third countries exposes the EU to natural disasters, pandemics, and geopolitical crises. Additionally, cheap imports of soy and other products undercut EU farmers’ returns, driving discontent that impacts the rollout of crucial environmental policies. This was seen with the Commission’s recent decision to roll back ‘good agricultural and environmental conditions’ (GAEC) in the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) that would have promoted agroecological practices and the growth of protein crops. While far-right political parties and farming lobbies disingenuously co-opted farmer protests to frame them as solely being about the negative impact of “green” policies, the truth is that EU farmers are being undercut by bilateral trade agreements.
- Global equity: The EU’s agri-trade policy undermines public health in third countries and perpetuates neocolonial forms of agrarian extractivism. While 84% of EU exports to the Mercosur region are services and high-value industrial products, 75% of Mercosur exports to the EU are agricultural and mineral resources that require land use change, extraction, and the use of hazardous agro-chemicals. In some cases, these chemicals, despite being banned or not approved for use in the EU, are actually produced by European companies such as Bayer, Syngenta, and BASF and exported to third countries with different regulations on pesticides and herbicides. This is an egregious double standard in terms of respect for public health and the environment within and beyond the EU’s borders. Between 2011 and 2021, over 29,000 pesticide poisonings were recorded in Brazil, the EU’s largest supplier of soy.
- Animal welfare: While the EU positions itself as a global leader in animal welfare by setting strict rules for animal feed and livestock breeding, transport, and slaughter conditions, most obligations do not apply to imported meat. When it comes to imports, only welfare at the time of slaughter is taken into consideration. In Brazil, the second-largest beef exporter to the EU, animal welfare checks on farms and slaughterhouses are not regularly carried out. In Argentina, the third-largest exporter, the humane slaughter of animals is not required. However, there is strong public support in the EU for more stringent import requirements: the special 2023 Eurobarometer survey on animal welfare found that 93% of European citizens want imported animal products to respect the same animal welfare standards as those applied in the EU.
We call for concrete policy actions, including setting more ambitious international standards, adopting import requirements in EU law aligned with sustainability goals that benefit EU farmers, promoting a shift towards protein autonomy, and strategically implementing ‘Mirror Measures.’ The latter is further explored in the coalition report “Double Standards on Our Plates: Using Mirror Measures to Mitigate the Impacts of EU Trade Policy for a Sustainable Food System.”
The time to rethink trade is now!