Latest from Brussels

Three Big European Parliament Votes Rock Corporate Ag

Fertilizer, herbicide and GM crops. 24th October 2017 saw not one but three significant votes in the European Parliament on each of these topics. Considering how these plenary votes went, it may be the case that, when it comes to agri-food policy matters, the tide is turning. So what happened, and what’s next? […]

Main stories

What are the Big Issues for Food, Farming & Rural Places?

There are some big and pressing topics in agri-food and for rural places. Some of these are ongoing – rural and farming depopulation, land access, agroecology, economic and ecological disparities in the Common Agricultural Policy – and others are new. So what’s new – and what’s worth covering in debate form? […]

Latest from key partners

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

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. […]

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We are fed up with agro industry!

A call to action for farmers, manufacturers and consumers to send a common message in Berlin on 16. January 2016. We are the people from the countryside and from the city, from the north and from the south. We are fed up with agro-industry – we want a rural an organic agricultural and food system that is accepted by society! […]