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Ministers of Agriculture of the EU Member States meet at the Council of Ministers on 18/09/2023 in Brussels. Ministers discussed, among other things, the issue of the use of the Agricultural Crisis Reserve for 2024. Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski said that the European Commission was considering granting new funds from the Agricultural Crisis Reserve for 2024 to Greece and Slovenia following extreme weather events. Slovenia has been hit by catastrophic floods, while Greece has been affected by widespread fires. In this context, Wojciechowski said that the Commission was already ready to consider the use of the crisis reserve, which was not due to be used until 2024 if necessary (the 2023 reserve is exhausted). While Greece and Slovenia welcomed the possibility of an earlier drawdown of the crisis reserve, several other ministers expressed doubts about how the crisis reserve would be used. The Lithuanian Minister for Agriculture said that the agricultural reserve is not equipped to deal with crises of this magnitude, the Latvian Minister pointed to a lack of transparency and the Irish Minister said that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent in the EU and that it is therefore necessary to consider whether the crisis reserve is the right instrument to deal with such situations. The Commission should decide by mid-October 2023.
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On 05/07/2023, the European Commission presented a proposal for EU legislation to increase the value of soil and its resources - soil health monitoring. The Soil Health Monitoring legislation aims to achieve healthy soils in the European Union by 2050 by collecting soil health data and making it available to farmers and other land managers. The proposal establishes sustainable soil management as the norm and addresses situations of unacceptable health and environmental risks due to soil contamination. However, it does not introduce any legally binding targets for Member States or for farmers or landowners and focuses primarily on monitoring. The proposal introduces a harmonised definition of soil health and a comprehensive and coherent monitoring framework, promoting sustainable soil management and remediation of contaminated sites. Agriculture Ministers discussed the Commission proposal at the Council of Ministers on 18/09/2023 in Brussels. They generally welcomed the Commission's proposal, supporting the main objective of the legislation in view of the crucial role that healthy soils play in adapting to climate change, in combating floods, as a carbon sink, etc. The Swedish Minister for Agriculture expressed doubts as to whether EU-wide legislation in this area was necessary; the Slovenian delegation considered that monitoring should be encouraged, but that the possibility of continuing to support such practices as voluntary agri-environmental measures in CAP strategic plans or other EU policies should be maintained. Negotiations will continue.

The European Parliament's Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (COMAGRI) adopted an own-initiative report on the European Protein Plan on 19/09/2023. The European Commission should present the European Protein Plan in the first half of next year (2024), therefore the COMAGRI report is not legally binding – it is a recommendation to the European Commission regarding what should be included in the future plan. The rapporteur at COMAGRI is Emma Wiesner (Renew, SE), who in her first draft report included support for proteins from plants, insects, fungi or algae, but also for laboratory-grown tissues imitating animal foods. She did not include animal proteins in the draft report. More than 700 amendments were subsequently submitted to the proposal. The resulting report, which was adopted on 19/09/2023 by a vote ratio of 34 for, 9 against, 3 MEPs abstained, already includes support for the sustainable production of animal proteins, considering the strong pressure from other MEPs and national and European agricultural and food non-governmental organizations. The COMAGRI committee also rejected the articles concerning laboratory-grown tissues imitating foods of animal origin and called for stricter health and safety evaluation of such produced foods. According to COMAGRI, a proper legislative framework should be provided to assess the authorization requirements of laboratory-grown foods imitating foods of animal origin, considering the ethical, social, health, environmental and economic aspects of these products. The report will be adopted by the plenary session of the European Parliament in October 2024.
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Italy has been facing an African swine fever outbreak since last year and 34,000 pigs on 12 farms in the northern Italian region of Lombardy have been slaughtered to prevent the spread of the disease. Lombardy is home to half of all Italian pigs (5 out of 10 million head), so Italy is culling pigs to maintain a stable supply chain that will not be further disrupted by the spread of the disease.
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The European public is exposed to the endocrine disruptor bisphenol A (BPA) well above acceptable health safety levels. This is stated in the report of the European Environment Agency dated 14/09/2023. The disruptor BPA can have a negative effect on the reproductive and immune systems of humans, it is found in some plastic and metal food packaging, reusable water bottles and drinking water pipes. 2,756 citizens from 11 European countries took part in the survey, according to the report, up to 100% of them are probably exposed to BPA above the safe limit for human health.
More information is available here.