Unhealthy Trade
Posted 4th April 2001

Caroline Lucas says foot-and-mouth and the harmful policies to stop it stem from a desire to expand imports and exports of food. It is ironic that against a backdrop of rising global trade barriers to European meat exports, this should be the week that the beleaguered World Trade Organisation is starting its efforts to further liberalise world food markets. Yet just as the increasingly Europe-wide foot-and- mouth disaster is forcing a fundamental rethink of the continent's agricultural practices, so it provides an opportunity for a reappraisal of the aims and purposes of world trade. Behind the debate over culling times, vaccination and election dates sparked by the spread of foot-and-mouth, there lies the fundamental issue of the malign role that meat imports and exports play in this tragedy. First, it is increasingly apparent that world food trade is one of the main culprits for the spread of such diseases. Even Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers Union, has begun to question the merits of globalisation and freer world trade after noting that last year's outbreak of classical swine fever and this year's foot-and-mouth epidemic both had Asian origins. Second, the importance placed on increasing world trade in meat helps explain the government's disproportionate handling of foot-and-mouth. Why, for example, has a disease that does no harm to humans and from which most animals recover in a matter of weeks, virtually shut down the countryside, led to the slaughter of healthy animals, and crippled our tourist industry?

The answer, of course, is to ensure that we resume ever greater exports of meat products as rapidly as possible. Yet the economics of this strategy do not make sense. According to the NFU, the UK earns £630m a year from meat and dairy exports. Compare this with the estimated cost of the foot-and-mouth epidemic: £9bn, mostly stemming from losses in tourism but also to farming. It will take more than 14 years of exports to equal the cost of the mayhem and damage done in a few weeks of the present "cull to eradicate" approach to foot-and-mouth. Europe's leaders and the WTO need to rethink the need for ever more international food trade. This is crucial not just because this trade forces down food and animal welfare standards, reduces food security for many of the world's poor and contributes to such disasters as foot-and-mouth and BSE but also because it exacerbates climate change. Trade-related transportation is one of the fastest growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions and is therefore significant in terms of climate change. Although most food is distributed by road and ship, the air freight of foodstuffs is increasing. For example, UK imports of fish products and fruit and vegetables by air between 1980 and 1990 increased 240 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively. The growth in food imports, which has occurred throughout Europe, often involves simultaneous exports in precisely the same products. The sheer absurdity of this "food swap" is illustrated by the fact that Britain imported 240,000 tonnes of pork and 125,000 tonnes of lamb in the same year that it exported 195,000 tonnes of pork and 102,000 tonnes of lamb. Even more bizarrely, Britain imported 61,400 tonnes of poultry meat from the Netherlands while at the same time it exported 33,100 tonnes of poultry meat to the Netherlands.

As more consumers, farmers and workers feel the downside of destructive globalisation, now is the time to consider how European leaders and the WTO can reduce world food trade and develop policies to relocalise production. European leaders should begin by replacing the Common Agricultural Policy with a localist rural and food policy. Its goal would be to keep production closer to the point of consumption and help protect and rebuild local economies around the world. It would give priority to local production through the introduction of eco-taxation, which would guarantee that the real costs of environmental damage, unsustainable production methods and long-distance trade are included in the costs. The policy would also promote the production of healthy foodstuffs by providing assistance in change-over costs and marketing to ensure that intensive systems are replaced by more benign ones, such as organic farming. The new policy would end the long-distance transportation and live exports of animals, restrict the concentration and market power of the principal food retailers and encourage rural regeneration and employment. As a member of the European Parliament's trade committee, I am committed to achieving this goal. It is time for both the European Union and the WTO to rethink the present obsessive race for ever greater international trade and competitiveness - not just for Europe's animals and the future of its farmers, tourism and countryside but also to ensure food security for small farmers and communities worldwide.

* The writer is Green member of the European Parliament for the south-east region