We just finished our editorial 58 with this wish: ” From Veterinaria Digital we have always defended the efforts of farmers to maintain the urbanized countryside with expression of George Pompidou, and we wish the new 2016 year to change the tendency and be a start of the process of deregulation and reindustrialization of the primary sector as proposed by Giorgio Napolitano.”

However it seems that things are not encouraging, since the protests of farmers in front of the building of the Council of Europe in September 2015, asking for measures solve the problems of falling down the prices of milk and pork before the IGW fair (International Green Week) in Berlin in January 2016 the situation got complicated. In many European regions production capacity of agriculture and livestock, has been reduced to 40% of consumption, well below to the international recommendations suggesting the minimum self-supply of 60% of consumption, due to the mass closure of facilities for loss nearly 39% of the annual income of the producers. A big part of Europe is in danger of food dependency from another part of Europe or for third countries. Producers of traditionally agricultural countries like Spain, France, Greece, Holland and Italy are openly affected by the situation.

We can explain the main causes of this situation:

(1) Difficulties, affecting some regions, due to deficiencies in the unified criteria of the European internal market:

1.1 Falling down of the prices caused by the policies of large retail chains.

1.2 Inequality of taxes and income from agricultural work in different European regions.

(2) Common difficulties in all European regions:

2.1 Repeated campaigns against red meat by putting at risk the health of consumers, allegations of the use of prohibited substances in poultry and dairy production; have caused serious declines in consumption in the last 15 years. Some sectors declared consumption declines 25% in this period.

2.2 Extra-Community imports causing a loss of revenue of 15%.

2.3 Restrictive environmental regulations that accumulates the producers.

And worst of all in our opinion is that in the government’s agendas the agriculture and livestock is not included. A continent that ignores the warnings of Pompidou and Napolitano seems to become food dependence in the immediate future with the serious consequences for maintaining its cohesion and social model.