Sini Eräjää is an agricultural and forestry activist in the Greenpeace European Unit

The COVID-19 outbreak is wreaking havoc on Europe's food and agricultural systems. It is clear that governments and the EU must help farmers, agricultural workers and food producers, to ensure that everyone has access to healthy food and that people do not lose their livelihoods, but what that should be help is already a dangerous tipping point.

In the turmoil - distribution issues and concerns about worker availability and safety - the agricultural industry has asked governments and the EU to buy and stock overproduced products like milk and beef to boost big players of the sector.

Some politicians have also called for a weakening of environmental standards and a loosening of the rules on agricultural subsidies. The industrial agriculture sector and its political allies also want to delay the European Commission's Farm to Fork strategy and the EU's biodiversity protection plans, with myopic claims that any further measures to protect the environment will be detrimental to the agricultural sector.

Any rescue package for the sector, the EU Farm to Fork plan and the common agricultural policy, must make our food and agriculture system more resistant to new shocks, and must not invite more crises. The underlying causes of outbreaks like COVID-19 run deeper than the trade in exotic animals in distant markets. In responding to this pandemic, ignoring the urgent need to fix our relationship with nature and the way we produce food would be extremely foolish.

To stop future outbreaks, we must stop invading nature and end industrial agriculture.

COVID-19 is not an isolated incident, but the latest in a long list of zoonotic diseases, those that jump from animals to humans, such as SARS, H1N1 (swine flu), avian flu, Ebola, Zika, and even HIV / AIDS.

When industries destroy forests and other ecosystems to exploit more land and resources, they drive wild animals out of their habitats and increase opportunities for transmission of infectious diseases to humans. Researchers estimate that 31% of emerging infectious disease outbreaks are linked to the destruction of forests and ecosystems, including HIV, Ebola and Zika. The main driver of global forest destruction is industrial agriculture, mainly for the production of meat, dairy and feed for these industries.

While the current pandemic does not appear to be directly related to industrial animal husbandry, the emergence and spread of other deadly infectious diseases has. Industrial agriculture, where many genetically similar animals huddle together, creates perfect breeding grounds for viruses to adapt and find new hosts, increasing their spread. This remains an important risk factor for future outbreaks.

Build resilient food systems to ensure healthy diets, even in a crisis.

Disruptions at borders have exposed the current food system's dependence on the free movement of seasonal workers and access to world markets. It turns out that European farmers, particularly the larger and more industrialized ones, are not only grazing cows in the fields and selling cheese nearby, but are highly dependent on imports of feed for their animals and export of their products. to remote places. markets

Instead of continuing to invest in highly globalized bulk food supply chains, we must start moving towards local, sustainable and resilient food systems. Systems that not only focus on producing traditional food, and more animal feed, but on integrating food production with the health of people and the planet, while protecting workers and guaranteeing a fair price for farmers.

The pandemic lesson: listen to science and act

Most of the world is taking unprecedented steps to stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus, following warnings from scientists about the dire costs of inaction. Meanwhile, we remain painfully aware of the fact that scientists have also warned that unmitigated climate collapse would unleash an even greater catastrophe. But governments have not come close to the level of action required.

Livestock farming is one of the main causes of climate collapse, since it represents 12% and 17% of the EU's greenhouse gas emissions. There is a growing scientific consensus on the need to reduce excessive consumption and production of meat, dairy and eggs to combat this, including studies by the IPCC, the EAT-Lancet commission and the RISE foundation.

We must also heed the scientists' warnings here, and build a food system that does not contribute to climate collapse and ecological collapse, as the current one does, and that is more resilient to the climate impacts that we know are now inevitable.

The EU and national governments must act

The EU should not invest crisis bailout money in industrial agriculture, benefiting the 1% of European farmers who already receive a third of subsidies under the EU's common agricultural policy, and financing industrial agriculture that puts us more risk of pandemics. Any crisis fund must protect small farmers and agricultural workers at risk, not cover the pockets of major players.

The EU should make sweeping cuts in meat and dairy an explicit target in its next Farm to Fork plan. It should also draft new laws to ensure that products sold in Europe (meat, dairy, animal feed, wood, palm oil) are not linked to the destruction of nature or the violation of human rights.

Europe's relationship with food and nature must not be neglected due to the COVID-19 crisis, it must be front and center in recovery.