The commission dedicated to assessing the impact of CETA highlighted the health risks associated with this free trade agreement between Europe and Canada.
He only agrees on the name … CETA, a free trade treaty between the European Union and Canada, enters into force on Thursday, despite the numerous protests it generates within civil society and professional and associative organizations. For various reasons, very different structures demand the abandonment of this agreement negotiated in the greatest opacity, according to a very questionable democratic process.
Emmanuel Macron had promised to take into account the remarks made by a commission set up in July to assess the impact of CETA on the environment, climate and health. The conclusions of this think tank were released in early September. They are not in favor of the implementation, as it stands, of this free trade agreement which applies from this Thursday.
Exit the precautionary principle?
In fact, it is in Europe that we find the most stringent regulations in terms of environmental and health protection – and even, the laws are often timid and fragile. CETA would risk sweeping away these health standards that Europe has taken so long to build because, as the report, “There are major differences in the assessment and management of public health risk between the EU and Canada”.
This is the case with the precautionary principle, according to which certain chemical substances cannot access the European market because of a suspected risk. In North America, a product can be authorized “as long as science has not clearly demonstrated its harmfulness”, underlines the report. However, CETA remains sufficiently vague on the question to fear an explosion of the precautionary principle (which is never mentioned in the agreement) and the future introduction in Europe of potentially toxic substances.
“The capacity of States to regulate in the field of the environment and health is preserved in principle”, write the rapporteurs, who are nevertheless very suspicious. “We cannot exclude that the inaccuracies of CETA lead to the arrival on the European market of products authorized by virtue of regulations which do not take into account the precautionary principle. “
Food: the shock of standards
Another worrying divergence: standards relating to the food chain, aimed at guaranteeing the safety of foodstuffs for the consumer. There are two opposing views here, as the report emphasizes. Europe has chosen to control health risks throughout the chain, from production to shelving.
On the contrary, the North American conception, called hygienist, “favors the treatment (thermal, physical or chemical) of decontamination at a given stage of production (pasteurization, ionization, use of chemical substances, etc.) without any particular condition of sanitary control in upstream or downstream of the treatment ”.
The report speaks of a problematic “antagonism”. The European consumer immediately invokes the image of GMO chicken stuffed with antibiotics and washed with bleach; and he is obviously not completely wrong. On the other hand, Canada will not have the right to export to Europe meats high in anabolic hormones and beta-agonists (ractopamine) … until the file is reopened, in the absence of any mention relating to this issue within the agreement.
Pesticides on the rise
In fact, CETA is particularly silent on issues of capital importance: animal feed (use of animal meal and GMO corn and soybeans, pesticide residues, etc.), the use of veterinary drugs (especially antibiotics). ) in breeding, animal welfare (breeding, transport and slaughter), list the report.
Europe, in the grip of intense debates on the use of pesticides, struggling to renew the authorization of glyphosate which citizens no longer want, will have to take into account the new regulations induced by CETA. “It is feared that the mechanisms of cooperation to harmonize maximum residue limits (MRLs) of pesticides authorized in agricultural and food products lead to downward harmonization”, we still read.
As European consumers demand safer food and more protective laws, CETA is emerging as a threat to public health. “Currently very fragile, [leur] Confidence can be shaken by knowledge of Canadian production methods that do not meet the demanding standards in force in the EU, already often considered insufficient by European citizens ”, report the reporters, lucid.
.
