Quick Take — The Italian organic label is launched

greater value for supply chains and ‘Made in Italy’ products. It will appear alongside the European Union’s organic production logo.

… “In 2025, the positive trend in domestic consumption will strengthen, rising by over 9 per cent compared with the previous year. The value of organic product consumption in Italy will reach 4.4 billion euros (a 9.2 per cent increase on 2024), the highest ever recorded, accounting for 4 per cent of the total value of national agri-food expenditure. Eight regions, together with the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, have already exceeded the European target of 25 per cent of utilised agricultural area under organic farming, which in 2025 accounts for 19.4 per cent of the total national area (2,377,749 hectares). There are, meanwhile, 95,389 organic producers, of whom 85,443 are farms.”

The sector faces many problems: are we putting obstacles in the way of organic farming, whilst encouraging the use of pesticides, and promoting wine, the excessive consumption of which is carcinogenic?

Furthermore, large-scale retailers have trivialised private-label products, stripping them of their value.

The result is that the area converted to organic farming in Italy fell (-5.4 per cent) in 2025, as highlighted by Giuseppe Coletti on LinkedIn.

Labels and advertising – I’m thinking of the pasta adverts – are of no use whatsoever if the sector is, in fact, penalised by a decree that undermines its very survival.

The European agricultural lobby, Copa-Cogeca, opposes reforms on pesticides, intensive farming and animal welfare

… The same method was used to defend public funding for the promotion of red and processed meat. When the Commission considered excluding these products from programmes in line with the European plan against cancer, Copa-Cogeca engaged with certain Commissioners, the wine and spirits organisations, and national associations. The restrictions were first watered down and then dropped altogether. The comment in the internal documents is succinct: “The lobbying has paid off.”

Quick Take — US Supreme Court: Bayer cannot be held liable for failing to include a warning about the risk of cancer on the label of the Roundup herbicide

unless such a warning is required by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the US federal agency responsible for assessing the safety of pesticides. This ruling could drastically reduce the number of new legal cases in the United States, but it does not amount to a declaration that glyphosate is harmless. The question many are therefore asking is a different one: what do we really know today about the possible health risks?…

Francesco Forastiere, environmental epidemiologist, researcher at the CNR and lecturer at the Environmental Research Group at Imperial College London. “The ruling concerns the fact that the company cannot be penalised for failing to include a warning on the label that the EPA does not require. But this does not in any way mean that glyphosate has been declared safe for human health…

 To date,” explains Forastiere, “the IARC’s conclusion remains valid: the evidence is considered sufficient in laboratory animals and limited in humans. This justifies the classification of glyphosate as a probable carcinogen…”

Below: Roundup on sale at Walmart

European Court: The Terra dei Fuochi Case and Consequences

“(…) the European Court also addresses itself to the national legislator, requiring him to introduce criminal laws proportionate to the seriousness of facts that cause damage both to the environment and to the lives of people living in a particular area. It is also crucial, according to the Court, that statutes of limitation are guaranteed to be compatible with the complexity of proceedings and that the government refrains from adopting measures, such as criminal shields, that guarantee the impunity of polluters. In the past, the absence of an effective regulatory framework was one of the causes of the failure of some well-known judicial initiatives, such as the one against Eternit owners for asbestos deaths”

Uncle Beppo Venosta: an original and unconventional personality

Original and revolutionary Uncle Beppo, my mother Giorgina's brother, was an original and revolutionary type, a great Carlo Marx-like beard and an active participant in Sixty-Eight and the '68ism' that followed. A journalist of great class, foreign correspondent from the Middle East for many years, an ironic and provocative person, he died of cancer, the disease that his father, grandfather Guido Venosta, had fought so long and so effectively with AIRC. Grandfather fortunately did not have to see him, having died the year before.

Food, environment and health: what could happen with the Mercosur-EU agreement

Mercosur: it is obvious that the ‘invasion’ risk of uncontrolled products, without the safeguard clauses, is likely to exacerbate the risks to our health. But the real problem is that in the European Union there are ‘derogation’ authorisations that allow prohibited substances to be used by member countries to compete unfairly with their neighbours. So before lashing out at Mercosur, perhaps we need to put things in order in Europe