The wine market in trouble!

On January 19, during the launch event of the National Plan to Combat Cancer, the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, gave a speech in which he specified that this plan was long-awaited and that it is a coherent and unified strategy to fight against this dreaded diseases.

"We are therefore launching a national plan that develops a vision both for the present and for future generations and that is based on an integrated, ambitious, and connected approach to European efforts to reduce cancer."

"The plan places great emphasis on encouraging and funding additional medical investigations that detect early signs of disease and lead to early diagnosis and effective treatment."

Thus it seems that our National Plan will focus only on early diagnosis and effective treatment because there are only 3 paragraphs that refer to prevention and that refer exclusively to tobacco and reducing its consumption.

What was not specified is that this National Plan to Combat Cancer will be subordinated to the European Plan to Combat Cancer, and this, compared to what has been established in Romania, has a strong focus on prevention, which would be very beneficial, if it would not cause a total change in consumption habits and affect some agricultural sectors, up to their total modification.

One of these sectors is the wine sector. Despite all the efforts of professional associations and information actions and scientific arguments regarding the benefits of moderate wine consumption, until this date, wine could not be removed from the category of alcoholic beverages and placed in a special category. The professional associations believe that the Beca Report, which is the basis of the Plan to Combat Cancer, as far as wine is concerned, did not take into account the interdisciplinary studies, and the producer associations were not allowed to present scientific conclusions that would combat the study, the somewhat controversial, appeared in The Lancet Oncology.

If last year there were still discussions and consultations for the realization of this plan, as you can find in the article from July, the current situation presented in points 15 and 16, of the Beca Report, is extremely restrictive:

15. - Recalls that Ethanol and acetaldehyde from the metabolism of ethanol in alcoholic beverages are classified as human carcinogens by the IARC and that in Europe it is estimated that 10% of all cancers in men and 3% of all cancers in women are attributed to alcohol consumption;

- emphasizes that the lower the amount of alcohol consumed, the lower the risk of developing cancer;

- reminds that alcohol consumption is a risk factor for many types of cancer, such as cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colorectal, and breast cancer;

- recalls the study referred to by the WHO, which recognizes that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption in terms of cancer prevention and stresses the need to take this into account when developing and implementing cancer prevention policy ;

16. - welcomes the Commission's objective to achieve at least a 10% reduction in harmful alcohol consumption by 2025;

- encourages the Commission and the Member States to promote actions to reduce and prevent the harmful effects caused by alcohol within a revised EU strategy on alcohol, including a European zero-drinking strategy for minors, accompanied, where appropriate, by legislative proposals, respecting the principle of subsidiarity and the current national legislation on age limits for alcohol consumption;

- supports the provision of information to consumers by improving the labeling of alcoholic beverages to include health warning signs on the labels and introducing the mandatory mention of the list of ingredients and nutritional information and, in addition, by introducing digital labeling;

- requests the Commission to take specific actions aimed at heavy and risky consumption;

- considers it important to protect minors from commercial communication on alcohol consumption, as well as product placement and sponsorship of alcohol brands, including in the digital environment, as advertising should not specifically target minors and not encourage alcohol consumption;

- requests the prohibition of alcohol advertising at sports events when these events are mainly attended by minors and requests the prohibition of sports sponsorship by alcohol producers;

- calls for careful monitoring of the implementation of the revised Directive on audiovisual media services;

- calls for the digital services proposal to strengthen the capacity of Member States to support and enforce legislation that aims to protect minors and other vulnerable populations from alcohol commercial communication;

- encourages the allocation of public funds for national and European awareness campaigns;

- supports the planned review of EU legislation on alcohol taxation and cross-border purchases of alcohol by individuals and a review of alcohol pricing policies, including consideration of an increase in taxes on alcoholic beverages;

The associations of wine producers in Europe support the fight against cancer and believe that it is necessary to have a coherent plan for it, which promotes moderation in both food and wine consumption. If the first phase of this plan considered the harmful consumption of alcohol, now the approach is "there is no safe level of alcohol consumption when it comes to cancer prevention". If until now all the other campaigns to warn about the risk of consuming various substances were prevention campaigns of the type "Avoid excess salt, sugar, and fat", the new approaches propose an extremely aggressive intervention, which is to come into force shortly.

Producer associations have proposed several amendments to the BECA Report, but the main changes requested are the following:

"15. - recalls that alcohol consumption is a risk factor for many types of cancer, such as cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colorectal and female breast cancer;

Proposed amendment:

- points out that harmful consumption and/or abuse of alcohol is a risk factor for many cancers, such as cancer of the oral cavity, pharynx, larynx, esophagus, liver, colorectal and female breast cancer, and not consumption in general

16. - supports the provision of information to consumers by improving the labeling of alcoholic beverages to include health warnings on the labels and the introduction of the mandatory mention of the list of ingredients and nutritional information and, in addition, the introduction of digital labeling;

Proposed amendment:

- supports the provision of information to consumers by improving the labeling of alcoholic beverages to include on the labels the signs of moderate and responsible consumption and the introduction of the mandatory mention of the list of ingredients and nutritional information and, in addition, the introduction of digital labeling; Alliance of Italian Cooperatives - agri-food, Assoenologi, Confagricoltura, CIA - Italian Farmers Confederation, Copagri, Federvini, Federdoc, Italian Wine Union

If the report is approved without the amendments proposed by the Associations, the impact will be very strong for wine producers, because all the measures are intended to massively reduce consumption. The WHO Action Plan aims to reduce alcohol consumption by at least 20% (compared to 2010) over the next eight years and hopes that 70% of WHO Member Nations will adopt "high-impact options and policies ”, which means moving from a plan to prevent the harmful consumption of alcohol, to reducing the consumption itself.

What has not been taken into account is the economic impact on the sectors covered by this study. Luca Rigotti, president of the WP group of Copa-Cogeca draws attention to the fact that "wine remained the main engine behind the growth of EU exports of agri-food products in the first seven months of 2021. In the period January-July, wine trade registered an increase of 30% (€2.2 billion), thus contributing to the EU-27 agri-food trade surplus of €39 billion."

European wine producers' associations believe that the problem is harmful alcohol consumption, not moderate consumption. From the data they have, they can say that over 80% of consumers consume moderate wine. "You don't have to be a wine expert to know that wine is an integral part of the Mediterranean diet, considered one of the healthiest diets in the world by the WHO, which points out that it is directly linked to a lower mortality rate due to the effects on disease prevention. Since 2010, the Mediterranean diet has been registered as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO." Luca Riggoti

In September 2020 Renew Europe MEPs took over the leadership of the special committee to fight cancer (BECA). In this way, we ask the coordinator of the committee, MEP Nicolae Ștefănuță (Unione Salvați România, RO) and equally the Romanian Euro-Parliamentarians to support the amendments proposed by the relevant Associations to the Beca Report and its modification accordingly.

"After the impact of COVID, producers will have to adapt relatively quickly to the changes imposed from 2023, by the new CAP (Common Agricultural Pact), Green Deal (Green Pact) and Farm to Fork (From Farm to Consumer), all of which are correlated with the decrease in wine consumption due to the impositions of the Plan to Combat Cancer will destabilize the wine market which is still far from being a mature production and consumption market in Romania". Ioana Bidian