TTIP TALKS: what's cooking?

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10 TTIP talks: What’s cooking? - Perspectives on Food & Farming
Proceedings of the Conference
TTIP – trading away good food and good farming?
The necessary regulations are there to protect people, the en-
vironment, to protect our rights, and the social system that
we have in Europe and want to have in Europe, and should
not be traded away.
Magda Stoczkiewicz, Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE)
Magda Stoczkiewicz (Director Friends of the Earth
Europe -FOEE) explained that there are similarities
between the EU system of Impact Assessment and the
US system of cost-benefit analysis. In the EU, the Impact
Assessment Board only wants economic factors included
in impact assessments and are working to include trade
impact; this is moving us in the wrong direction. Impact
Assessments already place more focus on economic
impacts, compared to social and environmental impact.
Including trade impact would exacerbate this already
biased approach.
Magda Stoczkiewicz stressed that good food and
good farming is in crisis – the reform of the Common
Agricultural Policy (CAP) did not move us towards better
food and farming. We currently produce more food
than necessary and at the same time we waste about
50% of food produced4 . Malnutrition exists both in the
developing world and the developed world, indicating
that our food system is broken.
First of all, it is important to look at who will benefit from
TTIP and who will bear the risks. It is clear that the big
winners will be big corporations and big agribusiness.
Who will lose: citizens and the environment on both
sides of the Atlantic. It is estimated that TTIP will lead to
a 0.5 % decline in farm incomes on average5 . In addition,
it is unsure whether TTIP will lead to a net increase in
trade or diversion of trade. So perhaps it is understand-
able that the Polish Minister of Agriculture is worried6
that Poland will be pushed out of the EU market in favour
of US products.
EU food safety regulation builds on a whole food chain
that addresses the safety of food produced at all stages,
while the US is pushing for their system which focuses
on end of production treatments like chlorine rinses. It is
important to maintain food safety legislation that looks
at all stages of production and how to effectively reduce
risk in each part of the food chain.
José Bové, Greens/EFA MEP member of the Committee on
Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) and the Commit-
tee on International Trade (INTA) introduced the first panel.
The objective of the first panel is to give a general overview
of major concerns for consumers, farmer and food on TTIP.
In conclusion, Magda Stoczkiewicz highlighted the differences in
regulations relating to GMO authorization and explained that US
biotech industries have made it very clear that they see TTIP as a
way to remove barriers for Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO).
She explained that although laws and policies on GMO will not
change, the implementing rules will change the “reality” of how
the laws are put into effect .