Keep Off All Rights Of Way In Wiltshire Closed Foot & Mouth - international food trade - Brief Article - Statistical Data Included

Time for a new direction

In the debate about the future direction of agriculture, two factors must be brought to the fore. Firstly, the malign effects of imports and exports in both starting the foot and mouth tragedy, and ensuring that helping to deal with it through vaccination was criminally delayed. Secondly, the solution must be seen to lie in an emphasis on the localisation of production, aided by a decline in international food trade. Most importantly this reduction in agricultural products criss-crossing the globe will be a significant contribution to solving climate change.

The rarely raised but central question in the present UK foot and mouth debacle is why is it that a disease that doesn't harm humans, and that most animals recover from, is resulting in massive culls of healthy animals and the virtual shut-down of huge swathes of the tourist industry? The answer is to regain as soon as possible a foot and mouth disease-free status to protect future exports of meat, live animals and dairy products.

Yet even in cold economic terms this makes no sense. In her detailed report Stopping the Great Food Swap -- Relocalising Europe's Food Supply [*] the Green MEP Caroline Lucas points out that according to the National Farmers Union, the UK earns [pound]630 million per year from meat and dairy exports. Compare this with the estimate of the cost of the foot and mouth epidemic of [pound]9 billion, mostly losses in tourism, but also to farming. In effect that means that it will take more than 14 years of exports to match the cost of the mayhem and damage done in a few weeks of the present cull to eradicate' approach to foot and mouth.

Concerns about the increasing global food trade must go beyond agriculture however.

Central to the post foot and mouth debate must be the realisation that 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 plane between 1980 and 1990 increased by 240 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively. UK air freight (imports and exports) grew by about 7 per cent a year in the 1990s and is expected to increase at a rate of 7.5 per cent a year to 2010.

The growth of such trade in and out of the European Union has accelerated. The continent remains one of the largest importers of food in the world. Imports of different food products to the EU have increased by between 4 per cent and 279 per cent over the last 30 years. On closer inspection it has also become clear that over the same period exports by EU member states increased even more dramatically, by between 164 per cent and 1,340 per cent.

In terms of animal welfare, the adverse effects of intensive livestock production in Europe and UK are made worse by the increasingly long distances millions of animals are forced to travel. In 1998, 6.8 million pigs, 2.9 million cattle and 2.5 million sheep were transported between EU member states,

Although the UK is a net importer of food, it is also often involved in simultaneous exports of the same products. The absurdity of this 'food swap' is illustrated by the fact that in 1998, Britain imported 61,400 tonnes of poultry meat from the Netherlands, in the same year that it exported 33,100 tonnes of poultry meat to the Netherlands. Britain imported 240,000 tonnes of pork and 125,000 tonnes of lamb while it exported 195,000 tonnes of pork and 102,000 tonnes of lamb.

As more consumers, farmers and workers are experiencing the downsides of such globalisation, now is the time to consider how we replace this with localisation. Europe requires a Localist Rural and Food Policy. Its goal would be to keep production much closer to the point of consumption and to help protect and rebuild local economies around the world. Its measures include prioritising such local production by introduction of ecotaxation to ensure that the real costs of environmental damage, unsustainable production methods and long distance trade are included in the costs. It would also promote the production of healthy foodstuffs by providing assistance for change-over costs and marketing to ensure that intensive systems are replaced by more benign ones such as organic farming. This new policy would end the long distance transport and live exports of animals, restrict the concentration and market power of the major food retailers and encourage rural regeneration and employment.

Dramatically reducing world food trade and relocalising production must also be central to the debate about transforming the Common Agricultural Policy. Fortunately such a radical demand is not restricted to calls from one UK Green MER The Chairman of the European Parliament's influential Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, the Green MEP Friedrich Wilhelm Graefe zu Baringdorf has welcomed this approach and called for such a debate not just in Brussels, but also in the World Trade Organisation and in environment and agriculture ministries everywhere.

Germany's new Green agricultural minister Renate Kunast has also demanded changes in Europe's agriculture to result in 'a great leap forward for local economies

For this to occur countries will need to limit imports of goods which can be produced domestically, and which could otherwise threaten such a rediversification of national agricultural systems.

The final reason why European countries can and must reduce imports and compensate for this by increased local production is that if they don't, how long can it be before foot and mouth reappears -- or another disease pays a visit -- through the importation of another far flung virus from somewhere in the world.

(*.) Stopping the Great Food Swap -- Relocalising Europe's Food Supply by Caroline Lucas MEP is available on www.greenparty.org.uk)

Colin Hines is the author of Localisation -- A Global Manifesto (Earthscan).

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