Europe’s farmers should be forewarned. According to a new study, if the pending Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) become a reality, the United States’ distinctly low food standards, coupled with the dominance of industrial agriculture, could trigger a complete “downfall” of the entire European farming sector.
Pointing to the significant differences between Europe and the United States’ agriculture industries, the study examines how the pending trade pact would try to “harmonize” standards pertaining to such things as genetically modified (GMO) crops, growth hormones in meat, and pesticides.
The study, carried out by the German federal association of green economy, UnternehmensGrün, and previewed by Euractiv on Monday, warns that the “TTIP, in its proposed form, strengthens the position of the large agri-food companies,” at the peril of Europe’s small farmers.
U.S. farms, the study finds, are in a superior position due to their larger size as well as “the lower consumer and production standards under which they are obligated to operate.”
“No one can produce products like cereal as cheaply as the USA,” the report states.
In the case of GMOs and the U.S. and Canada’s refusal to label them, Euractiv reports:
The USA has a markedly different attitude towards GMOs, where they are considered to be safe and are therefore produced at a cheaper cost. Due to this price advantage, European farmers would be forced to at least feed their livestock with GMO products, the end products of which are not governed by the same labelling requirement.
Conventional, GMO-free farmers could be squeezed out of the market, warned the study. Furthermore, the German government has legislation in the pipeline that would indeed obligate producers to label products such as milk, meat and eggs if they were produced using GMO feed. TTIP would complicate the adoption of such a law.