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While I welcome this clear overview about the current status of the CAP reform - in the light of the CEP conference held on 14 February - I regret that the emphasis on the public health dimension of the CAP reform is completely missing.

As I highlighted during the conference from the floor, the public health community is very concerned about the current status of the CAP reform.

Greening the CAP is not purely an agri-environmental issue but it is crucial for the public health community since it has further implications on other areas: water safety, use of dangerous chemicals, animal health, climate change, and the social well-being of not only of the rural population but of the whole population through food-safety.

Food is an important social determinant of health since food security and the quality of food has a crucial impact on our health.

Although there were earlier indications during the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) budget negotiations that the new CAP will contain references to healthy & nutritious food, neither the original COM proposal nor any of the tabled amendments by the European Parliament contained such measures.

From a public health angle, it is a matter of concern that an amendment recently adopted by MEPs would allow EU Member States to decide which crops receive EU farming subsidies. That could see several countries giving huge amounts of money to their tobacco farmers.

There is a fundamental contradiction in the way the CAP reform is currently dealt with. If this amendment were to be finalised now, financial resources could be used to subsidise directly tobacco farmers from the EU budget, in the context where the EU spends a large amount of money for anti-tobacco campaigns (such as ’Ex smokers are unstoppable’.)

Zoltán Massay-Kosubek
European Public Health & Agriculture Consortium (EPHAC)
http://www.epha.org/a/5581