Initiative for safe food submitted to the Federal Chancellery
Published: Friday, Aug 16th 2024, 14:30
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Food production in Switzerland should focus more on plant-based food in favor of greater self-sufficiency and clean drinking water. This is the demand of a federal popular initiative submitted in Bern on Friday.
The initiative entitled "For food security - by strengthening sustainable domestic production, more plant-based food and clean drinking water (food initiative)" was submitted to the Federal Chancellery with 113,103 signatures.
Franziska Herren from the "Clean water for all" association and six other people are behind the initiative. Herren was already the driving force behind the drinking water initiative that was rejected at the ballot box in June 2021.
The new initiative demands a level of self-sufficiency in food of at least seventy percent. According to the committee, the fact that Switzerland is currently fifty percent dependent on imports from abroad is due to the highly subsidized production of animal-based foodstuffs in Switzerland and not due to a lack of agricultural land.
Sixty percent of arable land is used to grow animal feed. If there were more plant-based foods, many more calories could be produced per hectare.
The petition also calls for the safeguarding of vital agricultural production bases: biodiversity and soil fertility. "Free services" of nature would be destroyed with fertilizers and pesticides, writes the committee.
The committee also claims that neglected water protection, drinking water wells shut down due to nitrates and pesticides and increased drought are increasingly jeopardizing the supply of clean drinking water.
©Keystone/SDA
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