It is not acceptable that misleading narratives are leading the debate around the sustainable livestock sector, influencing European Commission and policy makers.
Farm Europe and Eat Europe are grateful to have been invited to take part this week to the workshop organised by DG Grow of the European Commission on fermented dairy products, or – differently said – lab grown dairy products. It has been quite illuminating!
A workshop that is deemed to be based on science and facts should not start with misleading assumptions –- describing cows like “a bioreactor 10 times less effective”. Such allegation – that was the leitmotiv for all panellists – clearly shows that evidence-based approach and rigorous impact assessments are not at the core of the food system they promote.
Such approach deliberately left unanswered and not debated questions that all EU consumers are asking. How the societal and environmental role of the use of genetical modified organism (GMOs) is considered? How is effectiveness measured? How the energy use is being calculated? Compared to which model of livestock production? On what basis synthetic or lab-grown dairy product can be presented as having a “better taste” or as a “better ingredient”? What is the assessment about the consumers’ acceptance in having chemical food in their plates?
Farmers and food producers should be given the possibility to address such concerns in a balanced debate and take a strong position. As underlined by Farm Europe and Eat Europe – notably during the debate – fermentation is just one of the lab processes at stake, but the debate shall be holistic, considering also ethical and environmental aspects, and the consequences for the competitiveness of the EU agri-food sector, avoiding simple statements not based on unanimous science.
When it comes to the role and the impact of the livestock sector the debate should be based as well on science and real figures, that must take into consideration not only the emissions of the livestock sector, that no one denies are impactful – even though in a decreasing trend in the last decades – but also the positive externalities of the livestock production circle as well as the differences between emissions and their effects on the environment (- CO2 remains in the atmosphere 300-1,000 years, after 100 years all the CO2 emitted at time zero will still be in the atmosphere, while the original emission of methane (CH4) will already have disappeared 11.2 ± 1.3 years after emission) – as well as the positive externalities of the livestock production circle).
The 80% of water “consumed” in the production cycle of a cow go back to the field with a better quality in terms of organic matter, contributing to make our soils healthier. What about water and polluted waters resulting from a bioreactor process?
Manure and by products produced by a cow are transformed in a positive and virtuous bioeconomy model as energy (biogas, biomethane), or as organic fertilizer (digestate, Renure), just to give some examples.
Bioreactors would need to use a lot of energy that is assumed to come from renewable sources, whereas we know that even renewable energy is limited, unless we do not want to make our agricultural land fit only for solar panel production. Photosynthesis is the only free energy, and it is the very base of EU livestock production.
Finally, let’s not forget the risks for rural areas to be abandoned reducing the competitiveness of the livestock sector for the sake of few highly capitalistic companies ambitioning to concentrate on their hands food production. Who will die first? Farmers located in remote areas: are we ready to accept all the related risks linked to possible soil erosion, hydrogeological instability, or desertification?
On the legislative framework, as already reminded in a letter we sent to the European Commission, and backing the calls from the EU Agricultural Council and the European Parliament, there is a need to assess if the “novel food” Regulation as it stands is fit for purpose, asking to consider future modifications that take into consideration the need to align some aspects of the evaluation of food produced in laboratories with the evaluation procedures of medicines, in particular the request to include pre-clinical and clinical studies to be used as criteria for assessing the safety of lab-grown products, to take duly into consideration the regulations on GMOs and to address ethical issues.
O artigo foi publicado originalmente em Farm Europe.
