The long-awaited proposal for a legislative Framework for Sustainable Food Systems (FSFS) has been dropped off the 2024 work programme of the European Commission. The new legal framework should have set a clear path for the transition to a sustainable EU food system and to anchor the objectives of the F2F strategy into law by including all the actors in the food supply chain. It could have had the potential to enable all EU citizens to access more equitable, healthy and environmentally friendly food by fostering food environments that nurture people’s health and protect the planet. Current food environments are pushing consumers towards diets which are not in line with healthy eating recommendations as the recently published report The illusion of choice. Why someone already decided what you will eat for lunch by Eurogroup for Animals, the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) and the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) shows.  

This excellent report highlights all the factors shaping food environments so that consumers cannot really choose what they eat, but only makes a few references to the rights of workers throughout the food value chain - from farm to fork. Any successful attempt to regulate European food systems to make them sustainable and equitable (so that all social groups have access to healthy, environmentally-friendly food), should also ensure that they are just, so that that farm labourers, food plants workers, service staff and other categories of workers have decent working conditions.

The dropped proposal could have brought improvements to the working people since sustainability has three intertwined dimensions (economic, social and environmental) and a transition towards sustainable food systems would not be possible without respecting workers. EFFAT, the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism trade unions, has been supportive of the EU Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy, but has been advocating for a balanced appreciation of the social dimension. A social dimension needs to be integrated in all initiatives stemming from the Farm to Form strategy and the EU Green Deal, like the FSFS law. Decent working, living and working conditons and fair opportunities accross the whole food value chain need to be achieved.  

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Moreover, the initiatives need the support of workers, otherwise they will fail in their objectives. Trade Unions must be properly involved and consulted at each and every level in the formulation and implementation of the announced policies. The Commission should encourage further social dialogue in the agriculture, food processing and fisheries as one lever for effective implementation.

And we need to speak about the working and living conditions in the aforementioned sectors. In primary production we encounter deplorable working and living conditions such as shanty housing, long working hours, very poor wages, circumvention of minimum wages, lack of social protection, undocumented work and exploitive recruitment practices ranging up to severe labor exploitation and human trafficking. To tackle this, EFFAT has been calling for measures which go after the money. The agricultural sector is receiving big amount of public money through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as direct payments. In 2021, we succeeded in a joint effort along with many other allies to introduce a social conditionality along with the ecological one in the CAP 2023-2027. This means that CAP subsidies can be cut if violations of labour rights occur on farms receiving them. This was a big victory for the trade unions movement, but there is still a long way to go. The conditionality is still limited in its scope and it has been so far implemented in only a few European countries (France, Italy, Austria and Luxembourg). The proposed sanctions by some countries, moreover, are so low that they may not have a dissuasive effect on employers and may fail to deliver for the workers. Last but not least, the number and frequency of labour inspections needs to go significantly up in order for violations of social conditionality to be detected in the first place – according to EFFAT estimates, any individual agricultural employer in Germany can expect to undergo a labour inspection every 350 years.

There are issues with the working and living conditions in the meat sector, too. Overcrowded accommodation, a lack of social security coverage, job insecurity, long and unrecorded working hours, poor wages and health and safety standards are only some of the hardships many meat workers face across Europe. Such a dire reality is the consequence of a model that has developed through business practices and work arrangements aimed at cutting costs and escaping employer liability such as abusive subcontracting, bogus self-employment or the fraudulent use of temporary agency work. Covid-19 has exacerbated many of these issues, leading to the infection of nearly 30,000 meat-plant workers across the US and Europe.

The Code of Conduct for Responsible Business and Marketing Practices under the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy, released by the European Commission 2 years ago, does not deliver for workers at all since it is in the view of EFAT the outcome of businesses setting their own ambitions and writing their own rules to develop ‚sustainable‘ business practices. Some employer organisations even ruled out all wording on collective bargaining or a reference to social dialogue, principles enshrined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and international standards.

EFFAT and its global union federation IUF have, therefore, joined forces and launched a campaign called #MeatTheStandards: For a Fair Meat Sector in Europe aimed at increasing trade union membership and workplace representation in the sector, improving pay and working conditons through collective bargaining, and bringing workers' voices into the policy debate.  

Last but not least, the report rightly points out the role of public procurement in leading by example. The practice of awarding solely based on the lowest price is leading to unfair competition and a disregard for social criteria, and is pushing down wages and working conditions. EFFAT and FoodServiceEurope advocate in a joint statement for a ‘best-value’ approach in public procurement, urging the revision of the EU Public Procurement Directive to prioritise quality criteria and promote collective bargaining.

As was the case for the campaign for social conditionality in the CAP, we are certain that our allies in the environmental, consumer, health and animal welfare sectors will join us in pushing for better outcomes for the workers involved in making and getting us the food we eat!