EU farm aid 'killing' thousands each year
The EU's €45 billion a year Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) may be causing thousands of heart disease and stroke-related deaths each year by promoting fatty foods, according to a new British study published by the World Health Organisation.
Direct subsidies to farmers have led to massive overproduction of milk and beef in Europe, with the excess food then disposed of "principally as fats hidden in processed foods," the University of Liverpool research, published in the latest WHO journal, says.
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The EU spends some €16 billion a year alone promoting milk production, of which €500 million a year goes on boosting domestic butter consumption, it explains.
"CAP...may now have become a hazard to public health throughout the EU and may be promoting inequalities in health through the types of food consumed. This might controversially be described as 'a system designed to kill Europeans through CHD [Coronary Heart Disease]'."
Looking at the 15 EU states before the 2004 round of enlargement, the annual "mortality contribution attributable to CAP was approximately 9,800 additional CHD deaths and 3,000 additional stroke deaths within the EU," the study says, with France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK seeing the highest numbers of excess deaths.
The scientists warn that Polish government efforts to cut aid for fatty foods and to liberalise markets - which saw a 40 percent dip in heart disease deaths between 1990 and 2002 - are now at risk due to the country's entry into the CAP regime four years ago.
The new findings come as the French EU presidency prepares to push through in November a series of CAP reform proposals presented by the European Commission back in May.
The commission's CAP "health-check" suggests cuts in direct payments to farmers, but the reductions do not go as far as envisaged by liberalising EU states the UK and Sweden, and are accompanied by parallel moves to boost EU farm output in response to rising food prices.
A broader debate on the place of CAP in the EU budget has been tabled for next year.