On this day in vegan history · May 20, 2020
Brussels Puts Meat Reduction on Paper
The European Commission published a plan to remake how 450 million people eat, and quietly admitted that fewer animal products would have to be part of it.
The facts
- Date presented
- 20 May 2020, by the European Commission
- Official title
- A Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system
- 2030 target
- 25% of EU agricultural land under organic farming
- 2030 target
- 50% cut in the use and risk of chemical pesticides
On 20 May 2020, the European Commission presented the Farm to Fork Strategy, its plan for what it called a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system, as a central pillar of the European Green Deal. The strategy set numeric 2030 targets, including cutting chemical pesticide use and risk by 50%, reducing fertiliser use by at least 20%, and getting a quarter of EU farmland into organic production. It also, for the first time in an EU-wide food policy document, framed a shift toward more plant-based diets as part of tackling both climate change and rising obesity. An earlier leaked draft had proposed ending EU funding for meat promotion campaigns; the final version backed away from that, instead promising the promotion budget would favor more sustainable livestock methods. Animal welfare groups took the strategy as a real, if incomplete, opening.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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it is deeply disappointing that the EU has chickened out of ending the practice of pouring millions of euros into promoting inefficient and unsustainable meat production and meat consumption.
Dr Joanna Swabe, senior director of public affairs, Humane Society International/Europe, 20 May 2020
Source: Humane World for Animals -
use its promotion programme to support the most sustainable, carbon-efficient methods of livestock production
The European Commission's Farm to Fork Strategy, as quoted 20 May 2020
Source: Humane World for Animals
Why it still matters
It was the first time Brussels put diet shift into an official food-system strategy rather than leaving it to individual member states or NGOs, even as the same document showed how far a government will go to avoid actually naming meat reduction as policy.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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