The words of President Prandini
“The alliance born in Europe takes on board the concerns first raised by Coldiretti and confirms Italy's role as a trailblazer, which is a world leader in food quality and safety, in policies to protect citizens' health, also thanks to the approved law.” This is what the president of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini states in expressing appreciation for the protagonism at community level of the Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty Francesco Lollobrigida which led to the presentation of the signed document for the EU Council "Agriculture and Fisheries" on 23 January 2024 by 12 countries which provides for a "moratorium" on cell-based food.
The support of other nations
In the text shared by the Austrian, French and Italian delegations with the support also of the Czech, Cypriot, Greek, Hungarian, Luxembourg, Lithuanian, Maltese, Romanian and Slovak delegations, it is in fact asked - Coldiretti reports - that "before any authorization for production and to the consumption of cell-based foods, the European Commission should launch a public consultation on cell-based products" which "can never be called meat" and raise "ethical, economic, social and environmental questions, as well as on nutrition and health safety" calling into question the current regulatory framework which is inadequate.
Impact analysis
The position taken by a growing number of countries is a response – specifies Prandini – to the need to have unambiguous impact analyzes by public research and avoid transforming citizens into human guinea pigs, as we were the first to ask for with the collection of over 2 million signatures in support of the approved law, with more than 2 thousand municipalities having voted in favour, often unanimously, all the Regions of every political color and representatives of all sides as well as Ministers and Undersecretaries, national and European Parliamentarians and Mayors. The growing distrust in fact confirms the need to respect the precautionary principle in the face of a new technology with many unknowns which risks changing people's lives and the environment that surrounds us" continues Prandini in underlining that "precisely for this reason the challenge that Coldiretti launches to the European institutions is that laboratory products in the authorization processes are not equated with food but rather with pharmaceutical products".
The ethical and health sides
On an ethical and health level, the document - continues Coldiretti - highlights that it is necessary to take into account the fact that the EU has already decided to ban foods produced from cloned animals and meat treated with hormones" used instead in bioreactors for artificial foods while on an economic level, "the Commission and all States are urged to adopt preventive measures against food production monopolies" favored by high fixed costs and economies of scale which benefit a few large-scale producers with the risk of dependencies along the food chain. Also of concern to the 12 countries is the need to maintain pastures even in the less favored and mountainous areas, which provide invaluable environmental services such as carbon storage and to avoid - concludes Coldiretti - increasing inequalities regarding economic accessibility of genuine meat products to consumers (source: Coldiretti).