OLIVER MOORE A cause to freeze for

26 February 2015

ERLIN in January is a very cold time to have a

demo. Yet 50,000 people – about the same

number as attended Dublin’s biggest water

protest, the zenith of Ireland’s opposition to long and

oppressive austerity – marched the frosty streets that

month not for a high proﬁle march against cuts or

Islam, but rather to march against food. The Wir

Haben Es Satt, or “We are Fed Up” protest attracted 80

tractors and 120 organisations to demonstrate

against the globalised, industrialised extremes of the

food system.

Germany is not known for its protests, and 50,000

is 20,000 more than the previous year’s event. This

was one of the biggest protests in Germany in decades.

The 80-tractor bit is interesting too, especially for

an Irish person: these events are often, especially

when held in very urban countries like Germany, seen

as for naïve city types who don’t know farming. There

may of course be an element of truth in this. However,

as one of the organisers, organic farmer Jochen Fritz

pointed out, when 75% of the pig farmers who were in

business in 2000 are now gone, something has to give.

Farmers for business as usual is a bit like turkeys

voting for Christmas: even the organic ones get

slaughtered in the end.

A recent high-proﬁle publication in one of the

world’s leading journals Science gives us some

background. Rockstrom conceived idea of planetary

boundaries. That’s the safe operating space for

humanity, or the earth’s natural carrying capacity for

certain practices.

In these areas – climate change, biochemical cycles

(nitrogen and phosphorus) biosphere integrity

(biodiversity loss and species extinction) and ﬁnally

land-use change – we are exceeding our carrying

capacity. Climate change and biodiversity loss were

considered by the team to be core boundaries deﬁning

the future.

EU agri-food will reduce its climate change impact

by 1% by 2020, yet we need global decarbonisation of

80% by 2050 to prevent runaway climate change. An

area in the Baltic Sea sometimes rivalling the size of

Germany is stubbornly covered in a polluting algal

bloom thanks in large part to the excessive nitrogen

and phosphorus levels industrial pig farming oﬀ-loads

there.

Agri-food with its land-use, processes and

pesticides, undermines biodiversity. Species are

disappearing at between 100 and 1000 times the

natural extinction rate. The Food and Agriculture

Organisation of the UN classiﬁes 80% of ﬁsh stocks as

“fully or excessively depleted”.

Scientists asked for a 20% reduction in the EU

ﬁshing quotas. What happened? A 5% increase was

granted in January. There are socio-economic

measures of agri-food’s poor performance but

exceeding planetary boundaries is a solid indicator.

TTIP – the Transatlantic Trade and Investment

Partnership – was credited by organisers as bringing

the extra thousands out onto the streets this year.

Ostensibly about trade, many civil society

organisations fear TTIP is more about a race to the

bottom for food standards, where the lowest standard

becomes the norm. This suits corporations but not

threatens citizens’ hard fought labour, health and

environmental standards. TTIP is inimical to national

standards.

To take a relevant example, the EU’s precautionary

principle is seen as a barrier to equivalence, or

harmonisation, of pesticide rules between the EU and

US. Europe adopts a precautionary approach to

pesticides, while in the US proof has to be provided

that damage is being done. While currently pesticides

like paraquat, and many class 1 organophosphates are

not allowed in Europe, a recent report highlighted 82

potential new and very strong pesticides that would

come on the market in the EU, were the US standards

to be applied. There is evidence that a regulatory chill

on, for example, endocrine disrupting pesticides is

already happening in the EU, simply because

legislators anticipate TTIP coming into eﬀect.

It is interesting to see how these issues morph into

each other. Walter Haefeker, President of the European

Professional Beekeepers’ Association, spoke from the

stage about TTIP because he feared the EU’s partial

ban on bee-killing pesticides (neonicotonoids) is under

threat: already “the manufacturers in question do not

accept even the current temporary partial ban and

have initiated legal action against the EU Commission

at the European Court of Justice”, he said. One of the

main provisions in TTIP is to make it easier for

companies to sue governments or the EU potentially in

Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDSs). Indeed this

partial neonicotonoid ban has been speciﬁcally cited

by US negotiators as problematic for regulatory

harmonisation.

It is worth remembering that, while 97% of replies

to a recent EU consultation were against either TTIP or

ISDSs most lobbying on TTIP is by the corporate

sector, the biggest component of which is agribusiness

and food. It’s deﬁnitely a cause to march for.

What happened to the environmental movement,

and its marches, in Ireland? •

Dr Oliver Moore works for UCC’s Food Business and

Development Department

Germans care

enough about

food and the

environment to

march

OLIVER MOORE

A cause to freeze for

Berlin 2015, where they march for bees