Consequences of EU sustainability policy on the food sector

The EU's Farm to Fork (F2F) concept aims to make the food market in the EU more sustainable. This has an impact on many sectors, from agriculture to food labelling, and this also provokes criticism: as climate protection is the focus, more burdens and obligations are placed on farmers, growers and producers. Also on the consumer through an increase in the price of certain foods or even scarcity and the need to rethink. Not everyone likes the idea of refraining from eating sausages every day.

Prof. Dr. Kai Purnhagen, a food law expert at the University of Bayreuth, not only works as a scientific advisor to the EU Commission, he is also involved in reviewing reports for the Commission on the implementation of the Farm to Fork Strategy - such as most recently the "Towards sustainable food consumption" report (https://sapea.info/topic/food-consumption/). We asked him about the topic.

UBTaktuell: What does the F2F strategy mean in concrete terms?

Prof. Dr. Kai Purnhagen: F2F stands for "Farm to Fork". This actually refers to a regulatory concept for our food that has been common in the EU for a long time, which covers the entire life cycle of a food and not just the part that the end consumer sees. The Commission has now used its strategy paper to expand this concept into a comprehensive programme that focuses not only on the regulation of the food value chain, but on the food system as a whole. In other words, the aim is to regulate holistically towards more sustainability of all systems involved in food production.

What consequences does this have for the consumer?

In the context of regulation, the EU no longer wants to focus only on the concrete consumer decision - for example, "What information does the consumer need for his decision?" - but also on the environment and the conditions under which he makes such a decision. In principle, this is to be welcomed, as this approach is more in line with reality. However, one must also bear in mind that such regulatory interventions always presuppose a decision on a regulatory objective. In the past, these were indisputably the protection of health, the preservation of the diversity of supply and the protection of consumers from misinformation. If sustainability is now added as an essential regulatory goal, it remains to be seen how these goals will relate to each other. This will not be possible without friction.

What consequences do you expect for the food industry?

The industry will have to adjust to more standards and more controls in many areas. This will be reflected in consumer prices. Then we will see how much is actually behind the lip service paid to more sustainability and better protection of human rights in the supply chains. With regard to the new regulations, I would advise the industry to make use of the so-called "first mover advantage" if possible. Instead of waiting until the last minute to implement and complaining about it, it will certainly make more sense to accept lost battles and quickly gain experience with the new situation. This will create a competitive advantage over those who wait until later to adapt to the new regulations.

F2F was published in 2020, what has happened since then?

There has been a lot of discussion and evaluation, a lot is in flux. In science, people are now looking more closely at the effects of the changes, because more people are simply concerned with it. That is certainly a good development. In law, there have now been some legislative proposals, such as the proposal to regulate genome editing and the deforestation regulation

The latest report is about consumer behaviour. How do people respond to the appeals "less meat, more plant-based", for example? How can you get them to consider this more? Only through price?

The study situation here is very heterogeneous; as always, it depends on how the data was collected. Price is always a major factor. But taste, consistency and availability also play a big role. However, it seems that acceptance is always high when the new products are as similar as possible to the familiar ones. "Innovation" in itself is not really a big seller. But if the innovation can be compared with something known and if the innovation tastes better, then there is a good chance. However, there are exceptions: Constant availability with good marketing can also help new products to break through.