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New TTIP Report Reveals Corporate Takeover of Meat

By Shefali Sharma, European Director IATP, 12.07.2016 The Institute for Trade Policy’s European Office, along with international group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), German member of Via Campesina—Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft e.V. (AbL) and PowerShift launched their new report Selling Off the Farm: Corporate Meat’s Takeover through TTIP with a panel discussion and a press briefing at the European Parliament on the 12th July. Some key findings from the report: Many new agricultural and food technologies are being developed or already utilized with limited or no regulation. TTIP will make rulemaking in the public interest much more difficult in the future for technologies such as gene editing and cloning. Labour and environmental regulations related to the meat industry are inadequate on both sides of the Atlantic and need to be strengthened. Trade unions and environmental campaigns have achieved incremental gains; however, TTIP is likely to make it difficult to improve regulations. The chilling effect of TTIP’s (de)regulatory cooperation provisions will make it increasingly challenging in the future to effectively regulate impacts of the meat industry on climate change […]

Latest from Brussels

BREAKING: Commission Fails to Rush CETA Through

Having announced its intention to try to approve The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement – CETA – with Canada today, 5th July, the Commission has back tracked. Approval will now be sought from Member States’ national parliaments, though there are still caveats and concerns for campaigners. […]

Latest from EU Member States

How Brexit Threatens Britain’s Food Security

by Tim Lang, City University London The situation created by the British vote to leave the European Union is momentous for UK food. It is on a par with the Repeal of the Corn Laws of 1846 when Britain decided its Empire could feed it, not its own farmers. And it is as important as the creation of the Agriculture Act of 1947 when after two bruising wars in which the population faced serious risk of starvation, the country decided to put its food house in order – to produce more of what it could and look after the land. Those events set the tone and framework for UK food for decades after. Brexit will do the same. It doesn’t help that the political elites are now knifing each other in a distraction from the genuine, looming effects. My concern is that the security of food might get lost in the debacle. The UK must not let that happen. Food stocks are low in a just-in-time economy, an estimated three to five days’ worth. The […]

Latest from Brussels

Commission to Railroad CETA

In what has been an absolutely tumultuous week for the EU and its institutions, Jean Claude Junker has announced that the European Commission intends to approve the EU-Canada trade deal CETA without national parliament approval. […]

Main stories

Article 50 time bomb explained

Once paragraph four is taken into account, there is no role for the UK government to play in discussing the terms of the settlement that will be negotiated by the 27 remaining members of the European Union. Within a two-year window the UK will have to accept whatever is handed down by the remaining member states. […]

Latest from Brussels

ARC2020 Hosts Milk Crisis Debate

ARC2020’s next debate will be on the collapse in farm incomes, including in particular the milk price collapse. The causes, the consequences and most importantly the ways out of the current untenable situation will be explored in this debate over the coming weeks. […]