Food & Water Europe: A New Year

It's February? Already? Let's get this going! After a very busy 2013, 2014 sure started with a roar for Food & Water Europe! While we are full on for the new year, we want to say “Thank you!” for your part in our successes food, water and fracking successes in 2013, including...

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We’re hitting the ground running in 2014 and need you to be part of this year’s successes in our work to protect Europe’s food and water.
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By Eve Mitchell

It’s February? Already? Let’s get this going!

After a very busy 2013, 2014 sure started with a roar for Food & Water Europe!

While we are full on for the new year, we want to say “Thank you!” for your part in our successes food, water and fracking successes in 2013, including:

TWO BIG WATER VICTORIES

  1. Over 1.8 million (yes, that’s million) Europeans signed the European Citizen’s Initiative demanding our Governments keep corporate hands off our drinking water and sanitation. Some said it couldn’t be done, but we made it crystal clear that violations of the human right to water are simply intolerable, and “austerity” is no excuse.
  2. We worked with water justice movements right across Europe to push back multinationals and exclude water services from a key EU Directive written by and for private water companies trying get easier access to local water services of local communities. Together, we stopped them.

FIGHTING FOR OUR FOOD:

  1. We waved “Good Bye!” to Monsanto as the company pulled its applications for new GMOs in the EU. It gets better: The courts annulled the approval of BASF’s controversial GM potato Amflora because the Commission broke the rules, which leaves only one GM crop grown in the EU. Since BASF also pulled its GM applications in 2012, very few new GM crops threaten the future of our farming.
  2. The horsemeat scandal helped expose the dangers of our overcomplicated international meat trade, driving shoppers out of supermarkets and back to the butcher in the UK.

PUSHING BACK FRACKING: The European Parliament showed a healthy level of skepticism about industry promises for “safe fracking” and tried to impose mandatory environmental impact assessments for all shale gas drilling and fracking. The European Commission ignored the Parliament, local communities and a growing body of scientific evidence about the impacts of fracking and proposed non-binding, unenforceable rules that enable unregulated fracking to move forward without being monitored. Relentless lobbying by Big Oil & Gas paid off, but the fight isn’t over yet.

Food & Water Europe is going from strength to strength, and we’ll keep going until we get what we all need. Together we will:

  • Fight to protect our natural resources from the greed of corporations, banks and financial institutions pushing harder and harder to abandon everything to market forces. Their attempts put a price tag on nature won’t save us, or them, from the economic crisis they created, but it will destroy our common natural heritage. We’re standing up to them.
  • Make sure the EU Parliament rejection of a new GM crop for EU fields is respected by decision makers. We don’t need it, we don’t want it. We know the biotech ambassadors think they can force it on us, but the people have spoken. They said “No!”
  • Work with friends around the world to halt the spread of GM animals, insects and clones. From GM olive flies in Spain to GM salmon in Panama to the Commission ignoring the EU Parliament call for a full ban on clones for food — we know what you don’t want.
  • Expose the lack of courage among EU leaders who don’t stand up to the oil and gas industry to protect our communities from fracking.
  • Lead the 3rd Global Frackdown on 11 October 2014. Mark your calendars now and join this international day of action against fracking.
  • Last, but sadly not least, we’re fighting the worst aspects of the new US/EU trade deal to make sure the victories in high food standards we won in the past won’t be traded away in the future. We’ll also fight to ensure Big Business doesn’t win the right to sue YOUR Government for setting sensible rules to protect you, your food and your environment. If you eat or drink, you should worry about this deal — watch this space.

There’s a lot to do, but we’re ready. Join us.