European Food Declaration

With the European Common Agricultural Policy under review, it is a suitable time for people concerned about how our food is produced and distributed to come together in an attempt to influence the course of that policy. Signatures are sought for a 'European Food Declaration': please see the web link below. Here, only the first five paragraphs are reproduced from the web site.



http://www.europeanfooddeclaration.org/home
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> European food declaration:
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> Towards a healthy, sustainable, fair and mutually supportive Common Agriculture and Food policy
> Covernote of the “European Food declaration”
> We are a broad range of organisations -see list in "who are we"- – who are concerned with the future of food and agriculture in Europe. As in other regions in the world, the number of people and organizations that are working towards a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable food system is growing. Many of them are actively engaged in building a viable alternative to the current food production, distribution and consumption - from the bottom up. This new system of food and agriculture is firmly grounded on equity, the universal right to food, good governance and transparency.
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> A wide range of renewed activities such as increasing local food production, local markets, local procurement, seed swaps and so on has been emerging and growing across Europe. In addition new movements, such as the Transition Town movement, GM-free regions and national and local debates on food policy show increasing public support for another form of food and agriculture.
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> Yet, grassroots activities and local movements are not enough. We believe it is time to build a broad coalition of groups at the European level to challenge the current Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) and the European Commission’s and our governments’ avowed plans for a renewed CAP in 2013. Their vision is, to keep the global ‘competitiveness’ of Europe’s food industry as the chief objective of Europe’s CAP. The political process for the new CAP 2013 is starting now. We believe a strong message is needed, not only for EU policy makers, but for policy makers in our countries – a vision for a CAP suitable for the 21st century.
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> We have created a “European Food Declaration: towards a healthy, sustainable, fair and mutually supportive Common Agriculture and Food Policy”. It outlines what we think the policy objectives of a CAP for the next decades should be. We invite as many organizations, groups and individuals as possible to sign this declaration and to use it as a tool to promote the discussion about what kind of food and agriculture policy we need. We also ask you to share this declaration with other grassroots, civil society, environment and food organisations that are actively engaged in building a better food system.
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> Our aim is to collect as many signatures within our different networks before the end of February 2010. Early February, we will invite the public to sign the declaration.
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