Anthony Faiola, in a Washington Post feature item about a proposed US-EU trade agreement, raises a lot of the classic points of dispute between the U.S. and Europe about food sources ("A trade deal that many Europeans can't stomach").
It's a complex issue, with elements of gastronomy, trade, national pride, and even local politics.
On the food issue per se, I have to side with the Europeans regarding quality. The American megacorporations that represent probably 95% of what most people think of as "farming" these days have done a great job of producing huge quantities of foodstuffs cheaply. In their worldview, food is a commodity, and one chicken, egg, or parnsip is pretty much like the next. And because Americans by and large were indifferent to food in the 1950s and 60s when all the consolidation was taking place, we pretty much acquiesced in that trend.
Thus on this side of the Atlantic, those who value a more intricate eating experience are fighting a rear-guard action to claim back ground, via organic food movements, farmers' markets, and opposition to genetically modified foods.
In Europe, by contrast, more of a family-farm mentality remains; they hope to keep what they haven't lost yet. "Yet" is important, because it's hard to imagine, in today's world, that they can stave off industrialization of the foodstream forever. Supermarkets have made inroads in the European retail sector, and food grown or raised on an industrial scale would seem to be the norm as populations worldwide continue to grow (albeit more slowly in Europe).
Ultimately, I think the classic European culture (represented by M. Cabernet in the referenced article) will give way. It will survive, surely, as it has survived, and even taken new root, in the U.S. But a period of adjustment in Europe is seemingly inevitable, with or without a new US-EU trade agreement.
Meanwhile, on the trade side, it would seem that all the arguments are in favor of the new proposal. Free (or free-er) trade has been the watchword, the stated goal, among north-Atlantic allies for years, but the concept has faced many obstacles as forces of protectionism have remained stronger - on both sides - than logic would predict. But EU officials and European nations' food producers will need to figure out what they're really afraid of. If Germans, Spaniards, and Romanians are all so passionately devoted to real farm-raised, free-range chickens, then surely no one will buy those American factory-bred chicken breasts. The real fear seems to be of offering alternates that may be more attractive to many.
The process of consolidation and mass-marketing, whether in food production, homebuilding, or wireless service, isn't always pretty, and it doesn't always produce the best quality. But continuing population growth makes it inescapable.
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