Friends of the Earth Europe report exposes U.S.-EU trade deal threat to sustainable family farms
WASHINGTON, D.C. – As Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership negotiations between the U.S. and the European Union wind down in New York City today, Friends of the Earth Europe has published a new report showing how the TTIP trade deal will favor factory farms over family farms and increase corporate concentration in the agriculture sector.
The report highlights the TTIP threat to European consumer, sanitary, and environmental standards related to genetically modified foods and pesticide safety, among many others. The report also shows that the very existence of whole EU farm sectors — such as grassland beef production — will be put at risk by the agreement.
As the report documents, the TTIP agreement will increase markets for factory farmed meat and make it even harder for the U.S. and Europe to maintain sustainable livestock and poultry operations. Animal welfare would be put at further risk as would European public health measures related to the use of growth promoters like ractopamine in pig meat production and the use of pathogen washes like chlorine in processing chicken meat, as a poor substitute for maintaining sanitary conditions in industrial scale poultry feeding factories, each housing as many as 20,000 to 30,000 birds.
Read the Friends of the Earth Europe report ‘Trading away EU farmers’ here, http://bit.ly/238o8yf
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