It is ironic that against a backdrop of rising global trade barriers to European meat exports that this is the week that the beleaguered World Trade Organisation is starting its efforts to further liberalise world food markets. Yet just as this increasingly continent wide disaster is forcing a fundamental rethink of the direction of Europeâs agriculture, so it also provides an opportunity for a reconsideration of the end goals of the rules of world trade.

At the Green Partyâs Spring conference last weekend I released my Report Stopping the Great Food Swap - Relocalising Europe’s Food Supply. Its purpose was to move the debate about Foot and Mouth on from culling times, vaccination, army involvement, and effects on election dates onto the far more fundamental question of the malign role of meat imports and exports in this increasingly tragic situation.

Support for such fundamental questioning of the results of world trade have come from unexpected quarters. Ben Gill President of the National Farmers Union has begun to question the merits of globalisation and has publicly asked "Is it a coincidence that we had classical swine fever in East Anglia last year of an Asian origin, and Foot and Mouth now, also of an Asian origin? It raises questions about freer world trade"

Indeed the great unasked question is why is it that a disease that doesn’t harm humans and from which most animals recover in a matter of weeks, has virtually shut down the countryside, led to massive slaughter of healthy animals, and crippled our tourist industry? The answer of course is to ensure that we get back on the trail of the holy grail of ever greater exports as rapidly as possible.

Yet the economics of this just donât make sense. According to the National Farmers Union, the UK earns £630 million per year from meat and dairy exports. Compare this with the estimate of the cost of the Foot and Mouth epidemic of £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 Îcull to eradicateâ approach to Foot and Mouth.

What is required from both Europeâs leaders and the World Trade Organisation is a radical rethink of the need for ever more international food trade. This is crucial not just because such trade forces down food and animal welfare standards, lessens food security for many of the planetâs 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 airfreight of foodstuffs is increasing. For example, UK imports of fish products and fruit and vegetables by plane between 1980 and 1990 increased by 240% and 90%, respectively. UK air freight (imports and exports) grew by about 7 per cent a year in the 1990’s and is expected to increase at a rate of 7.5 per cent a year to 2010.

Indeed over the last thirty years the rise in the trade in meat, live animals and other agricultural products in and out of European countries has been dramatic, yet this often involves simultaneous trade in precisely the same products. European countries can and must reduce imports and compensate for this by increased local production. If they donât how long before Foot and Mouth reappears as another far flung virus enters the country via imports.

The sheer absurdity of this Îfood swapâ is seen by the fact that Britain imported 240,000 tonnes of pork and 125,000 tonnes of lamb while at the same time exporting 195,000 tonnes of pork and 102,000 tonnes of lamb. Even more bizarrely we imported

61,400 tonnes of poultry meat from the Netherlands in the same year that we exported 33,100 tonnes of poultry meat to the Netherlands.

Dramatically curbing world food trade and relocalising production must be central to the debate about transforming the Common Agricultural Policy and the rules of the World Trade Organisation. The Chairman of the European Parliamentâs 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 agricultural ministries everywhere.

Germanyâs new Green agricultural minister Renate Kunast has also demanded changes in Europeâs agriculture to result in Îa great leap forward for local economiesâ. This will not be possible unless countries limit imports of goods that can be produced domestically and which could threaten such a rediversification of national agricultural systems.

As more consumers, farmers and workers are feeling the downside of destructive globalisation, now is the time to consider how we replace this with localisation. The CAP must be replaced by 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 eco-taxation 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 in change-over costs and marketing to ensure that intensive systems are replaced by more natural ones such as organic farming. The Policy would end the long distance transport of animals, restrict the concentration and market power of the major food retailers and encourage rural regeneration and employment.

 

As a member of the European Parliament’s Trade Committee, I am committed to working to achieve this. It is time both Europe and the World Trade Organisation rethought the present obsessive race for ever greater international trade and competitiveness. It is this that should go up in smoke, not just for Europeâs animals and the future for its farmers, tourism and the countryside, but also to ensure food security for small farmers and communities world-wide.  

(SEE ALSO: STOPPING THE GREAT FOOD SWAP - RELOCALISING EUROPE’S FOOD SUPPLY)