Europe's agriculture policy seriously damages people's health

doi:10.1136/bmj.39510.377627.C2

BMJ 2008;336:526-527 (8 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.39510.377627.C2

News

Europe’s agriculture policy seriously damages people’s health

Roger Dobson

¹ Abergavenny

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Around 9000 deaths a year result from the European Union’scommon agriculture policy (CAP), a new report says.

The study attributes some 7000 deaths from cardiovascular causesand 2000 from stroke to CAP, which has a major influence onnutrition across Europe, including increasing the availabilityand consumption of products containing saturated fats (Bulletinof the World Health Organization doi: 10.2471/BLT.07.042069).

"CAP reforms are urgently required," the authors write. "CAP,while established on the basis of sound public health principles,may now have become a hazard to public health throughout theEU and may be promoting inequalities in health through the typesof food consumed. This might controversially be described as‘a system designed to kill Europeans through CHD [coronaryheart disease].’"

In the study the authors set out to estimate the burden of cardiovasculardisease in 15 European Union countries (before the 2004 enlargement)as a result . . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?