After years of hesitation. How can one not be pleased when a position taken by the EU goes beyond the normal significance of documents of this kind to take on the importance of an "act of civilisation"? We are not speaking of speeches and declarations, whose role is to affirm principles and which have never been lacking in Europe. There is no shortage in this field. There is even a risk of excess with periodic slides towards rhetoric or demagogy. No, this remark refers to operational positions, which then determine a European policy and action on a given subject.
But enough circumlocution and beating about the bush. The European position we wish to underline is that taken in Geneva in WTO negotiations on agricultural trade. Readers who are familiar with our Editorials will have understood already what we are getting at: the somewhat solemn tone of this incipit welcomes in the clarity and the vigour with which, after years of hesitation, European today clearly affirms an essential principle - trade liberalisation must not compromise each country's right to follow policies which allow due consideration to be taken of environmental policies, product safety, product quality and animal welfare in agricultural production. It will be said that none of this has ever been banned or even hampered. That's true. But in the documents presented in Geneva (1) the European Commission finally added conclusions to the premise, that is: the countries which respect the requirements cited have the right to protect their agriculture and to allow their farmers to face up to the demands made by the civil society. The "non commercial considerations" are more important, in farm trade, than commercial interests. Productions that are conform to high norms of environmental protection and animal welfare must not be supplanted by imports produced in less strict conditions.
It is obvious, and the Commission is right to place emphasis on this, that these considerations aim above all at the highly intensive and industrialised methods of production used, above all for poultry and pig farming, in industrialised countries. Though it is true, for example, that European pigmeat surpluses derive exclusively from the fact that the directive on nitrates has not been respected and that over-production is poisoning the water and springs of whole regions, the European Commission must impose full respect of this directive before subsidising producers or exports. Coherence is essential. Though it is prohibited to ruin the agriculture of those who apply high environmental and quality norms, it is also prohibited to put someone else's agriculture out of joint by financial power increased through export subsidies. But be this as it may, now that Europe has affirmed the main principles after much hesitation, it is unthinkable for it to take a step backwards.
Europe is far from being isolated. In this context, Ullensvang is just as important as Geneva. In this small Norwegian town a conference was held early July of the group which had been created in Seattle between countries planning to state, at international level, the "non-commercial concerns in agriculture", a group founded by the European Commission, Japan, Switzerland, Korea, Norway and Mauritius. In addition to the founders, those taking part at the Conference included representatives of about thirty other countries and many non-governmental organisations (including America). Their final conclusions (2) affirm the need to take into account, in the context of WTO agricultural talks, contributions made by agriculture to society, mainly in terms of rural development (in 80% at least of the territory, far more than land intended for farm production), food safety (original meaning for guaranteeing that the local population is fed) and cultural diversity.
The Ullensvang conclusions, we can see, go considerably beyond the concerns expressed in the documents cited by the European Commission and extend to aspects of the agricultural problem often evoked under this heading, which aim to affirm the essential, irreplaceable role of agriculture for a country's civilisation, and for the civilisation of a continent. I checked it out: the first positions taken along these lines under this heading date back to 1995. For a long while they were accompanied by incomprehension and scepticism, and even sarcasm - "How dare I mix up such frivolous things as the European landscape with things as serious as freedom in trade?" Let us state things clearly: I am far from wanting to give myself the role of precursor. I still have enough sense of proportion to acknowledge the real precursors, who have all the honour and merit if, by chance, just a little bit of their humanism can be seen in this heading. I have always quoted these real precursors. And I am pleased to make this a partial reminder.
Plutarch, Steiner, Ceronetti and the others. The indignation of Guido Ceronetti over the fate of cattle dates back to the seventies: "industrial livestock farming, in world trade, is a planetary torture chamber: the long agonising journeys by sea and rail, hysterectomies in order to place the foetus in incubators, artificial insemination, intensive food impregnated with chemical horrors, in the dark and motionless so that they fatten up and become more anaemic, the fear, the chains and the mutilation are the main instruments used (…) Regarding the toxic nature of meat, one must not neglect the fact that analyses do not indicate the negative energy in each molecule of a sensitive being treated as an inanimate entity, and the concentration, in those who eat it, of the residues of its terror and despair". Destruction of the olive trees? "This is a crime which, if one had a correct idea of the man-earth-olive tree-sky relation, should be inexorably punished with death: he who is despicable enough to cut down an olive tree should know that he will lose his head". And the malediction against the abandonment of countless plant varieties that nature and the millenniums have left us: "monoculture, cheerless countryside …" with all that ensues" (3).
And, as far back as 1923, the description by Rudolf Steiner of the effects of meat food for herbivorous animals: "these animals have the ability to transform plant food into meat. By feeding them food of animal origin, there is better output as the animal does not have to carry out this process. But the result is the production of substances that are harmful for the organism, mainly uric acid and urea salt crystals which are mainly deposited in the nervous system and in the brain of the cow, and which make it mad" (4). Reflection on this text and a little less cupidity would have spared Europe from the mad cow disease. All the more as, two millenniums before, Plutarch had already mentioned, in its "Treaty on Animals", the "madness of bovines that had become carnivorous".
Claudio Magris spoke of Europe's landscapes which "contain centuries of history become nature, empires and traditions absorbed by the land" and of Bavarian woodcutters who took their berets off before each fallen tree, with a prayer (5). What is the point in going on? Even the official Europe is finding and recognising its traditions, its civilisation again today - and that is what counts. Of course, the battle is not won. There are still the economists who evaluate the cost of European agricultural policy for the third countries at 75 billion dollars annually, basing their calculation on exports that the third countries could make in the EU if there were no barriers. And then there are newspapers which take such aberrant calculations seriously (6), considering as negligible the disappearance of European agriculture and finding it reasonable that the goal of world agriculture is that of invading this small appendix of Asia called Europe, which only makes up 5% of the emerged land and even less of the world's population, while famine threatens whole Continents. Of course, the observations that we have made are sometimes considered (even by officials of the European institutions) as a demonstration of protectionism, as the EU is the main world importer of agricultural products (and will remain so). Of course, there is and there will remain those who complain about such ideas and put up a strong defence of the CAP and have a manner of bowing down before the theses presented by France, although this editorial is far from being an odour in sanctity to Paris or to COPA as it is opposed to maintaining unlimited export refunds for all production intended, a priori, for intervention".
This is not too serious. What is essential in our eyes is what was said at the beginning: the official Europe has renewed ties with its humanism of the past, the positions taken are an "act of civilisation", for us and for the whole world.
Ferdinando Riccardi
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(1) See our daily bulletin dated 1 July, pp.9/10. (2) See above all our bulletin dated 7 July, p.12. (3) Guido Ceronetti: "La carta è stanca". (4) Rudolf Steiner, Conférence de Dornach (Switzerland), published by "Arbeitvorträgen". (5) Claudio Magris "Danube". (6) "Financial Times" of 26 June 2000.