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Last week, the European think tank Farm Europe responded to a study published by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) during the summer months. The JRC study focused on the possible effects of implementing the goals of Farm to Fork and biodiversity strategy on agricultural policy, and the JRC was criticized by European agricultural organizations, including Copa and Cogeca, for publishing the study during the summer holidays. According to the Farm Europe think tank, the results of the study show that agricultural production in key sectors, such as cereals, oilseeds, beef, and milk, could fall by more than 15%, and in the pig meat, poultry, and vegetable sectors by more than 5%. This will also have a negative impact on European agri-food exports and farmers' incomes. According to Farm Europe, the decline in exports and European production will lead to a strengthening of imports from third countries, where the production of greenhouse gas emissions will increase due to the strengthening of agricultural production, which the European Commission is trying to reduce in the EU through Farm to Fork strategy.

On 01/09/2021, members of the EP's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) discussed with the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski the new EU Forest strategy for 2030. Several MEPs criticized the new strategy, calling the strategy vague, artificial and beyond the competences of the European Commission. Wojciechowski argued that its main goal was to ensure healthy and resilient forests for years to come through a coordinated, consistent, and science-based policy. According to him, the strategy is not intended as an intervention in the sovereignty of states, but as support for the implementation of measures at the national level.
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Last week, a panel of experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) for the fight against cancer supported the introduction of nutrition labelling on the front of packaging using the French Nutri-Score system. The WHO Panel on Cancer has called on the European Commission to choose the Nutri-Score as a standard label indicating whether a food is healthy or not. According to WHO experts, the Nutri-Score is an effective tool for improving consumer preferences when buying food from a health point of view; its introduction could also help reduce the risk of cancer.
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The report of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE), published on 23/08/2021, draws attention to the 22% increase in Rapid Alert System for Food and F (RASFF) alerts in 2020 compared to 2019. The total number of exchange reports in the RASFF system in 2020 rose to the highest number to date 14,997. The number of notifications concerning pesticides has risen sharply, although authorizations for several frequently used active substances have not been renewed in the last few years. The number of alerts has doubled in the last seven years, with the most frequently reported problem being the presence of ethylene oxide in sesame seeds. The increased number of reports of exceedances of pesticide limits mainly concerns the category of fruit and vegetables, especially for production imported from Turkey.
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The British Ministry of Agriculture DEFRA has approved the first trial cultivation of genetically modified wheat modified by the DNA modification technique, the so-called CRISPR. It is the first country in Europe to take a similar step. The wheat is modified to have reduced levels of naturally occurring asparagine, which is converted to the carcinogenic acrylamide during bread baking. The presence of acrylamide in food has been discussed since 2002. In that year, it was confirmed that acrylamide causes cancer in rodents and is probably carcinogenic to humans. The aim of the project is therefore to reduce consumer exposure to acrylamide. The five-year pilot cultivation project will run until September 2026.
More information is available here.