During his first Agrifish EU council, new German Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir presented himself as an advocate of climate protection and animal welfare as the ministers discussed measures against deforestation.
This is reported by ProAgro Group citing Euractiv.
“The active destruction of forests is a catastrophe and speeds up the climate crisis dramatically”, the Green politician, who had been sworn in as minister a week earlier, said on the sidelines of Monday’s (13 December) meeting.
In the monthly gathering, the EU-27 agriculture ministers discussed a regulation meant to fight deforestation, which the European Commission had proposed in November. Özdemir came out strongly in favour of the EU executive’s proposal, saying it aligned with the interests of the new government coalition in Berlin.
“We cannot restrict ourselves to pushing forest protection within Germany, we have to do it globally if we want to have a chance of combatting the climate crisis,” he said.
The Commission proposal aims to cut back on the consumption of products linked to deforestation by making the import of certain products, including agricultural commodities, conditional on avoiding deforestation throughout the supply chain.
Özdemir was happy that the proposed regulation “rightfully makes a connection between global deforestation on the one hand and the consumption of agricultural commodities on the other”.
