The EU Commission's vision must focus on the entire food value chain
The German Food Association welcomes EU agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen's initiative to make the European agricultural and food sector more attractive as a strategic economic sector for the EU and to strengthen its competitiveness. At the same time, the association warns that the "Vision for Agriculture and Food" presented is largely focused on agriculture. In order to ensure a sustainable and competitive food supply in Europe and improve food security overall, all stakeholders from agriculture to food processing, the craft sector, trade and gastronomy must be taken into account. "In particular, the reduction of overregulation and bureaucracy emphasized in the vision through the announced introduction of stress tests and reality checks for existing and new legislation is of existential importance for the entire food industry. It is therefore important to keep the entire value chain in mind in all planned measures to strengthen competitiveness. In this sense, we also fully support the core objective formulated as the "heart of the vision", the building of trust and a dialog across the entire food chain," explains Christoph Minhoff, Managing Director of the German Food Association.
With over 4.4 million employees, the German food industry is a key economic sector in Germany and Europe. It ensures that the population is fed with high-quality food, drives innovation and makes a decisive contribution to sustainability. However, rising regulatory burdens, bureaucratic procedural hurdles, high energy prices and increasing government intervention in the market are jeopardizing the industry's ability to compete and innovate. "We urgently need targeted measures to reduce bureaucracy, more investment in research and development, a strong internal market and a fact-based dialogue along the entire chain," emphasizes Minhoff.
The transformation towards more sustainable food systems is a joint task. "Sustainability is only successful if it is also economically viable. In addition, existing conflicts of objectives between sustainability, supply and food safety must be resolved by prioritizing the conflicting goals," explains Minhoff. "We are ready to enter into a dialog with the EU Commission and the new German government to jointly develop solutions that contribute to strengthening the entire food value chain."
Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
Other news from the department politics & laws
