The document discusses a conference on sustainable food and farming that brought together over 150 delegates from government, NGOs, and other organizations. Many experts spoke on issues like the need to reduce meat consumption and intensity of agriculture, explore new technologies like cultured meat, and address problems caused by intensive farming such as large nitrogen footprints. Overall the conference focused on realizing a vision for a sustainable food and farming future through practical solutions and policy changes.

2. “We should ask society; do not over-consume food ... We should find
ways to have a more sustainable animal husbandry system ... The less
intensive the agricultural system, the more sustainable.”
Professor Athanasios Tsaftaris, Minister of Rural Development and Food, Greece
“We have to change the way we think…”
Nicos Kouyialis, Minister of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment, Cyprus
“The questions of the 1960s are not the questions of today…”
Keynote speaker Dr Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
“Consumption is as important as production and the two have
got to meet.”
Philip Lymbery, Chief Executive, Compassion in World Farming
“The impact of factory farming on animals is not a standalone issue –
it’s bad news for people and the planet, too.”
Reineke Hameleers, Director, Eurogroup for Animals
“Diet is no longer a private matter…”
Magda Stoczkiewicz, Director, Friends of the Earth Europe

3. “We can still solve the problem without having to rely on
industrial farming.”
Marco Contiero, EU Policy Director on Agriculture, Greenpeace European Unit
“We don’t need meat for health; we don’t need meat for calories.”
Professor Dr Mark Post, Professor and Chair of Physiology, Maastricht University
“One third of the increase in food production is due to population
growth, the rest is due to diet.”
Professor Dr Jan Willem Erisman, Extraordinary Professor of Integrated Nitrogen
Studies and Director of the Louis Bolk Institute
”Give the right price signals and embed the social and environmental
costs of food production in the final price...this is of primary
importance.”
Rosita Zilli, Deputy Secretary-General, Euro Coop

4. Introduction
The day-long Averting Farmageddon
conference in Brussels, held on 18 February
2014, was the result of a unique
collaboration between the Greek Presidency
of the European Union and Compassion in
World Farming. It took place ahead of the
launch of the long-awaited Sustainable Food
Communication from the European
Commission, due in spring 2014. The event
explored the far-reaching, often devastating,
impacts of intensive-livestock farming – on
people and the planet, as well as animals.
Crucially, speakers also focused on possible
solutions to the intensive-farming problem,
presenting a vision of a sustainable food and
farming future and practical ways to fulfil it.

5. Event summary
Averting Farmageddon: Sustainable Food for All brought together more than
150 delegates from a cross-section of organisations and initiatives, including
government bodies, education and research establishments, NGOs,
international movements, and retail and consumer networks.
More than twenty experts spoke at the event, bringing a catalogue of
insights, ideas and innovations to the food and farming debate. The speakers
covered a spectrum of fascinating themes, including the importance of
“nutritional security”, the rise of the lab-grown burger, the “demand vs
production” debate and why nitrogen footprints matter.
Cutting-edge, contrasting and colourful, the day’s many presentations and
discussions converged towards the subject dominating the recently published
book Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat – namely, our broken food
system and how to fix it. Philip Lymbery, Compassion’s CEO and co-author of
the groundbreaking title, gave a talk at the conference that was – both
literally and metaphorically – at the very heart of the day.

6. Style of proceedings
This presentation outlines the key themes
that arose during Averting Farmageddon:
Sustainable Food for All. Rather than
document everything that was said on the
day, it throws the spotlight on the most
important issues, and includes the most
relevant quotes and statistics from the
speakers. Also included are links to the
speaker presentations.

7. Key themes

8. Reality-check the global “meat rush”
“We need to stop talking
about increasing productivity;
it’s the wrong narrative.”
Marco Contiero, EU Policy Director on
Agriculture, Greenpeace European Unit
1

9. Reality-check the global “meat rush”
1
We must reality-check the global “meat rush” by challenging the
assumption that we need to produce more, and think more about
demanding (consuming) less.
Dr Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food,
explained how the boom in meat production since the 1960s has now far
outstripped the boom in population, with average global meat consumption
exceeding the 35kg per person per year that’s generally accepted as a
threshold for sustainable meat consumption by 20%; Western nations are
mainly responsible, with consumption as high as 120kg per person per year
in some countries. A similar story came from Professor Dr Jan Willem Erisman
of the Louis Bolk Institute, who argued that the average EU citizen eats
around 70% more protein than needed, raising the concern that we’re
choosing “food luxury” over food security.

10. Reality-check the global “meat rush”
1
Marco Contiero, EU Policy Director on Agriculture at Greenpeace, highlighted
the irony in worrying about feeding the world in 2050, citing today’s one
billion hungry people as society’s immediate priority. He called for a
redefinition of agricultural yields, suggesting “number of people nourished
per hectare” is a much more useful concept than “tonnes produced per
hectare”. He aired concerns about the term “sustainable intensification”,
which is sometimes used to justify agricultural inputs and a push in
production, and identified the arbitrary nature of the assumed 70%
increase in productivity that’s often cited as a way to feed the world in
2050 – a figure that he says is based on out-of-date science that’s been
repeated with little scrutiny. Ben Caspar, Coordinator of the EU Sustainable
Food Communication at the European Commission, also questioned the
integrity of the much-touted 70% hike in productivity and the “sustainable
intensification mantra”, while Bankwatch’s Natalia Kolomiets insisted there
must be a drop in meat consumption to thwart the spread of intensive
farms in countries in transition (from a planned economy to a market
economy), such as the Ukraine.

11. Reality-check the global “meat rush”
1
Friends of the Earth’s Magda Stoczkiewicz alluded to her organisation’s
recent report, the Meat Atlas, to reinforce the message that the last thing
our over-burdened, resource-strained planet needs is for higher rates of
meat production. The closing words of Slow Food International’s
Anne Marie Matarrese – “...less meat, better meat...” – were a fitting
vision for the future.

12. Consider the importance of “nutritional
security” and a healthy food system
“There are huge inequalities in access
to food; in access to healthy and
sustainable food that contributes to
good-health outcomes.”
Dorota Sienkiewicz, Health Equity and Policy Coherence
Coordinator, European Public Health Alliance
2

13. Consider the importance of “nutritional
security” and a healthy food system
2
We must consider the importance of “nutritional security”, as opposed
to just food security; a truly sustainable food system must provide everyone
with the right nutrition, not just the right number of calories.
Dorota Sienkiewicz of the European Public Health Alliance devoted
her entire presentation to our “upside-down food system”, which offers
increased availability of food but uneven access to nutrition. Sienkiewicz
claimed that diet-related illnesses (such as cardiovascular disease, some
cancers, type-II diabetes and obesity) have reached pandemic proportions
in Europe. In richer nations, the poorest population groups suffer the most,
she claimed, because diets that are high in fats, sugar and salt are often
cheaper than healthier diets, as a result of misguided agricultural subsidies. In
the US, it’s thought that nearly 130,000 lives and $17 billion in medical
costs could be saved each year (figures that are thought to be similar in
the EU) if people ate the right amount of fruit and vegetables – but there isn’t
enough fresh produce for everyone to have their 5-a-day, due to backward
agricultural subsidies and illogical production systems.

14. Consider the importance of “nutritional
security” and a healthy food system
2
Asserting the need to level good health outcomes across all stratas of society,
Sienkiewicz called for nutritional security to be placed “at the heart of
farming and the whole food system” to bring an end to what she termed
“food poverty”.
The interplay between farming methods, meat consumption and
human health were alluded to throughout the day: Dr Olivier De Schutter
described obesity as a “hidden cost” of intensive farming; Myrsini Tzani of
the Ministry of Rural Development and Food in Greece spoke about the rise
of zoonotic diseases and antibiotic-resistant bacteria as a result of
intensive systems; and Dr Mary Yannakoulia of Harokopio University outlined
the many benefits of Mediterranean diets, which – amongst other factors
– tend not to rely heavily on meat.

15. Account for the costs and benefits
of agriculture
3
“Citizens pay three times for their food – the
retail price, the subsidies that push down the
price in the first place and then cleaning up the
mess caused by a broken food subsidy system.”
Faustine Defossez, Senior Policy Officer: Agriculture
and Bioenergy, European Environmental Bureau

16. Account for the costs and benefits
of agriculture
3
We need to account for the costs and benefits of agriculture by
repurposing subsidies and taxes so that “cheap” meat and highly processed
foods reflect their true costs, and healthier foods become more affordable
and widely accessible.
Philip Lymbery’s book Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap
Meat alludes, in its very title, to the need for authentic price signals in the
meat we buy. This sentiment was echoed throughout the conference, with
the terms “hidden costs”, “external costs” and “societal costs” referred
to again and again. The truth is that over-the-counter prices of “cheap” meat
are ludicrously low, given how much we pay indirectly for an unsustainable
food system, and better-quality meat is – for many people, at least
prohibitively expensive. As Rosita Zilli, Deputy Secretary-General of Euro
Coop, said: “We need to make the ‘right’ option for consumers (eg, local,
seasonal, Fair Trade) the ‘easiest’ option.”

17. Account for the costs and benefits
of agriculture
3
So how do we do this? With a fairer, more logical framework of subsidies,
taxes and policies that support sustainable farming and make
unsustainable practices a less appealing option. Respectively, financial
incentives and disincentives would be the most effective way to achieve
this, said Zilli. Philip Lymbery also stated that policies and subsidies to
support pasture- and land-based farming and bring down the cost of
higher-welfare meat were crucial in the drive to create a more sustainable
farming future. A similar message came from Dorota Sienkiewicz of the
European Public Health Alliance, who called for an overhaul of the misguided
agricultural subsidies that make certain food items artificially cheaper than
others, as well as increased taxes on unhealthy products. These arguments
came together in the presentation from Faustine Defossez of the European
Environmental Bureau, who drew attention to the disappointing disparity
between the green reform (or “greening”) we were promised in the CAP and
the unproductive “green-washing” we’ve received instead.

18. Explore new technologies
“My story...is a creative
solution; it’s probably the
most creative solution.”
Professor Dr Mark Post, Professor and
Chair of Physiology, Maastricht University
4

19. Explore new technologies
4
It’s time to explore new technologies to help ease our burdened
food system while satiating “our taste for meat”, including research
into growing cultured meat in laboratories.
Occupying a position at the forefront of food science,
Professor Dr Mark Post gave a fascinating account of his quest to find
a viable alternative to meat as we know it. His study, which is based
on harvesting stem cells from a live cow and stimulating them to bulk
up and take on the form of meat, culminated in the launch of the
world’s first stem-cell burger in 2013; the burger was tasted by food
critics at a glitzy launch in London under the glare of the world’s
media. Professor Post’s watchwords for his pioneering project were
“efficiency, sustainability, mimicry”.

20. Explore new technologies
4
There are still significant challenges to overcome in the move towards
lab-grown meat, not least the price – the famed burger was reputed
to have cost around 250,000 euros to develop. But this cost is falling
rapidly, and could end up in the region of 50 euros per kilo of meat
in the not-too-distant future. That’s still quite a lot, but it starts to look
more attractive when you factor in the reduced external costs when
compared to industrially produced meat. Professor Post’s burger could
be a real game-changer and “a model for the future”; using only a
handful of cells from a single animal, there is the potential to create
many thousands of tonnes of meat, satisfying our hunger for this
age-old food stuff and easing the relentless drive for ever-intensive
farming. In his own words: “This is a technology that still has to prove
itself. In theory it’s possible and in theory it’s beautiful and it could be
a perfect solution to many of the problems that have been identified
here today.”

21. Reduce food waste
“I think there is absolutely enormous potential
for reducing food waste because so little policy
intervention Europe-wide has been done in this
area; an enormous number of animals are
being killed and not even eaten.”
Ben Caspar, Coordinator of the EU Sustainable Food
Communication, DG Environment, European Commission
5

22. Reduce food waste
5
It’s become imperative that we reduce food waste at every stage in
the farm-to-fork process. For a start, intensive farming is inherently
wasteful, as we lose calories and protein by feeding leguminous crops
to animals before we consume their meat; then there’s even more
waste at the food-processing, retail and household stages.
In his keynote speech, Dr Olivier De Schutter stated that a jawdropping 1.3 billion tonnes of food is wasted every year – a
figure that he said amounts to more than half of the total volume of
cereals produced in a year. This is scandalous, in a world where nearly
a billion people are starving. An equally staggering game of
numbers came from the European Commission’s Ben Caspar, who said
that every year the equivalent of 70 million chickens in the UK are
killed but never eaten – and if you scale this figure up to cover the
rest of Europe and the world, it amounts to wasted meat and wasted
lives on a truly unimaginable scale.

23. Reduce food waste
5
As a consequence, Caspar revealed that a major theme in the
European Commission’s forthcoming Sustainable Food
Communication will be food waste and the “complete waste of
productivity” it represents, and the great potential there is to shape
a more sustainable system by reducing it.
Compassion’s CEO Philip Lymbery outlined what he believes
are the measures society should take to feed the planet’s predicted
population in 2050, both of which are inextricably tied up in the
notion of food waste. He suggested that we should reduce grainfed livestock by half to feed an extra 1.3 bn and reduce food
waste by half to feed another 1.35 billion – effectively rechanneling
our food system’s lost calories to feed an extra 2.36 billion people.
He also spoke about the idea of allowing pigs and poultry to eat food
waste – no silver bullet, but a potentially powerful piece of the
sustainable-farming puzzle and a lesson in recycling logic.

24. Beware intensive farming’s
‘nitrogen footprint’
“Nitrogen is used very inefficiently in
agriculture, and when it’s lost to the
environment, it contributes to many
environmental issues.”
Professor Dr Jan Willem Erisman, Extraordinary Professor of
Integrated Nitrogen Studies and Director of the Louis Bolk Institute
6

25. Beware intensive farming’s
‘nitrogen footprint’
6
Society must beware intensive farming’s “nitrogen footprint”,
caused by fertilisers used on feed crops, and support pasture-based
farming to reduce the intensity of grain use and the associated
need for nitrogen-based fertilisers.
Professor Dr Jan Willem Erisman, Extraordinary Professor of
Integrated Nitrogen Studies and Director of the Louis Bolk Institute,
focused exclusively in his presentation on the nitrogen-hungry
nature of intensive farming – mainly due to its reliance on
monocultured crops, which need large quantities of fertiliser and
which are wasted by the farm animals, who convert these crops
inefficiently into food for us. Although nitrogen sustains life, he
explained, it creates huge problems when lost to the environment,
as it is in vast quantities through intensive farming.

26. Beware intensive farming’s
‘nitrogen footprint’
6
This is because fertiliser efficiency is low – for every 100kg of
nitrogen fertiliser used on vegetables, only 14kg are “consumed”
by humans; and for meat, this figures plummets, to 4kg.
Professor Erisman went on to explain the devastating effects
of excess nitrogen in our world, in the form of poor air quality,
forest die-back, acidification, eutrophication, the ozone hole and
global warming. According to the professor, 85% of the nitrogen
in crops produced in Europe goes to animals, leaving only 15%
to go directly to humans. And the fertiliser that does eventually
reach human mouths is unevenly distributed across the world, with
just 20% of the population “eating” 80% of the fertiliser –
figures that explain the contradictory crises of obesity and
malnutrition on our planet.

27. Beware intensive farming’s
‘nitrogen footprint’
6
For Professor Erisman, the solutions to the nitrogen problem are
fourfold: smarter diets, including eating less meat; smart
extensification, which offers fewer local impacts, such as odour
and unattractive landscapes; smart intensification, which
includes resource efficiency and reducing waste; and closed
nutrient cycles, which can promote healthy soils.

28. Educate and inform the public
“The future is for our children…
they have to know and learn
about this, because one day they
will have to operate sustainably.”
Andrea Gavinelli, Head of Animal Welfare Unit,
DG Health and Consumers, European Commission
7

29. Educate and inform the public
7
There is now a pressing need to educate and inform the
public about sustainable food and farming; arguably, two of the
most effective vehicles for this are to provide honest product
labelling for adults and to instil good food habits in the
younger generation.
Calls for greater transparency and the effective
dissemination of information reverberated throughout the
conference. Slow Food International’s Anne Marie Matarrese
articulated the need for food education throughout society
and Andrea Gavinelli from the European Commission explained
how greater access to information would “empower
consumers”. Compassion’s CEO Philip Lymbery spoke of the
need to ensure honest labelling, and to advise consumers on
buying from the land, reducing waste and eating less meat.

30. Educate and inform the public
7
And in a similar vein, Rosita Zilli of Euro Coop talked about
giving consumers more control through information, and
promoting sustainable food items in retail outlets by
increasing their accessibility and availability. As Friends of the
Earth’s Magda Stoczkiewicz asserted, “eating is a political
issue”; so it’s more crucial than ever that we get people making
the right choices based on clear, reliable information.
Andrea Gavinelli went on to explore the role of
education in securing society's sustainable future. He talked
about the importance of teaching our young people about the
animal-welfare and human-health benefits of agricultural
good practice, which will equip them with enough knowledge
to make the right the food choices now and in the future.

31. Moderator
biographies

32. Kriton Arsenis
Kriton Arsenis has been a Member of the European Parliament for the
Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats (S&D) since July 2009. He
is a member of the Committees on Environment, Public Health and Food
Safety, Fisheries and Development. He studied planning and regional
development at the University of Thessaly in Greece (1996–2001) and
holds a Master’s in International Development (MPA/ID) from Harvard
University, The Kennedy School of Government (2001–2003).
Daniela Battaglia
Daniela Battaglia works in the Animal Production and Health Division of
the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO),
where she is responsible for activities in support of animal welfare. She
coordinates the FAO’s Gateway to Farm Animal Welfare and co-produces
FAOcast. Previously, Daniela was with the European Commission and has
worked extensively on farm-animal and rural-development projects in
Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East.

33. Reineke Hameleers
Before taking up the position of Director of Eurogroup for Animals,
Reineke was Regional Director for the Dutch Society for the Protection of
Animals. She holds a Master’s degree in Arts and Sciences, and wrote her
thesis on human-animal relationships. Reineke established the
Netherlands’ first animal-welfare centre, delivering educational activities,
rescue work and animal-health and -behaviour services.
Sir David Madden
Sir David served as British Ambassador in Greece from 1999 to 2004. He
then served as Political Adviser to the European Union Peace-Keeping
Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He is a senior member of St Antony’s
College, Oxford, and Chair of the Development Committee of South East
European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX). Sir David is a trustee of both
Compassion in World Farming and The Brooke Hospital for Animals.
Dil Peeling
Dil is Director of Campaigns at Compassion in World Farming. He has
several decades’ experience in the livestock sector, focusing on
agricultural policy reform. His last role was based in Ethiopia for the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization.

34. Speaker
biographies

35. Ben Caspar
Having recently helped draft the European Commission's Roadmap to a
Resource Efficient Europe, Ben Caspar is now leading the development
of the Commission's upcoming Sustainable Food Strategy, due in 2014.
With a background in molecular biology, he joined the European
Commission in 2002 to work on the reform of the Common Fisheries
Policy and then moved on to work on the environmental labelling of
products, including running the European Ecolabel scheme for four
years. He is based in the Circular Economy Unit of DG Environment.
Marco Contiero
Marco Contiero has been the EU Policy Director on Agriculture at
Greenpeace for the last eight years. Author of several reports and
briefings on agricultural policies, he coordinates Greenpeace’s work at
European level and provides the organisation with legal and political
advice on agricultural issues. He holds a Master’s degree in European
Environmental Law from the University of Amsterdam (2004) and a
Master’s in International Trade Law from the University of Padua (2003).
Before leading the agriculture campaign, he coordinated Greenpeace’s
policy work on the adoption of the EU Regulation on chemicals (REACH)
for two years. Previously, Contiero worked for the European
Environmental Bureau (EEB) as a legal advisor (2004).

36. Faustine Defossez
Faustine Defossez is the European Environmental Bureau’s (EEB)
agriculture and bioenergy senior policy officer. Before joining the EEB in
2010, she worked for the European Commission in the Directorate
General for Agriculture and Rural Development, on the European Food
Aid programme for the most deprived. She holds a Master’s degree in
European Union law from the University of Lille, France, and a Master’s
degree in EU Politics from the Institute for Political Sciences in
Strasbourg, France.
Professor Dr Jan Willem Erisman
Professor Erisman is CEO of the Louis Bolk Institute, which provides
international advice and research on sustainable agriculture, nutrition
and healthcare. He is also Extraordinary Professor of Integrated Nitrogen
Studies at the VU University Amsterdam. He was Chair of the European
Science Foundation programme Nitrogen in Europe from 2005 to 2011,
and is a member of the Scientific Committee of the International
Geosphere Biosphere Program. His recent work has focused on
optimising food production and energy use while minimising the
environmental impacts from increased nitrogen cycling.

37. Andrea Gavinelli
Andrea is a veterinarian and is currently Head of the Animal Welfare Unit
in the Health and Consumers Directorate General of the European
Commission. Since 2001, he has been an active member of the Working
Group on Animal Welfare of the World Animal Health Organization
(OIE), and he is a member of specific working groups at international
level with EU trading partners. Andrea is on the editorial board of the
FAO Gateway to Farm Animal Welfare. Andrea coordinated the first web
consultation of the Commission on Animal Welfare and the first two
European-wide surveys on the attitudes of European consumers towards
animal welfare. He understands that animal welfare is an important issue
for EU citizens.
Natalia Kolomiets
Natalia Kolomiets works at the National Ecological Centre of Ukraine,
Bankwatch Network, as a specialist in environmental protection and
community development. In particular, Natalia assists affected
communities in their struggle against the violation of citizens' rights
related to industrial farming and land acquisition practices. She provides
expertise to help locals scope out environmental problems, file cases and
build communication with the state authorities, companies, CSOs and
other stakeholders, and helps with community capacity-building. She
earned her MSc degree in Environmental Studies from the National
University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine, and her MSc in Social
Studies from Lund University, Sweden.

38. Nicos Kouyialis
Nicos Kouyialis was born in Nicosia on March 30, 1967. He studied in
the USA and holds a BSc and MSc in Electrical Engineering from North
Carolina State University (NCSU). He has been the Chairman of the
Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), UK, since 2006, and is an
elected member of the IET Council. He also served as chairman of the
Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE), UK. Until 2011, he held the
position of the General Organizer of the European Party of Cyprus, while
in the same year he was elected as the Vice President of the party, a
position that he still holds today. Mr Kouyialis took office as Minister of
Agriculture, Natural Resources and Environment on March 1, 2013. He is
married and has three children.
Philip Lymbery
Philip has been CEO of Compassion in World Farming since 2005 and
was Compassion’s campaigns director throughout the 1990s – a period
of extraordinary success, including EU-wide bans on veal crates and
battery cages. Philip’s book Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat,
which was co-authored with Isabel Oakeshott and explores the
devastation caused by factory farming, was published by Bloomsbury last
month to widespread critical acclaim. The Independent newspaper called
it “an unforgettable indictment of the new hyper-industrialised
agriculture originating in the USA which is now spreading around the
world.”

39. Anne Marie Matarrese
Anne Marie is a PhD candidate at the University of Leicester, where she is
researching the political representation of animals with the support of
the Centre for Animals and Social Justice (www.casj.org.uk). She is an
animal-welfare policy advisor and former communications officer for the
NGO Slow Food International. She received an MA in Environmental
Politics from Keele University and a BA in Political Science from LUISS
University, Rome.
Professor Dr Mark Post
Professor Post is a medical doctor who has taught at the universities of
Utrecht and Eindhoven, and at the medical schools of both Harvard
University and Dartmouth College in the US. Since January 2004, he has
been Chair of Physiology and Vice Dean of Biomedical Technology at
Maastricht University. He researches the engineering of tissues for
medical applications and for food. Professor Post has developed cultured
beef from bovine stem cells in order to supplement, and transform
reliance on, meat from livestock. The first cultured beef burger was
launched in London in August 2013.

40. Dr Olivier De Schutter
Dr De Schutter has been the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the
Right to Food since 2008. He teaches international human rights law,
European Union law and legal theory at the Université Catholique de
Louvain and the College of Europe, both of which are in Belgium, and is
a visiting professor at Columbia University. During his two terms of office
as the Special Rapporteur, he has been outspoken in seeking global
reform to support smallholder farmers, reduce poverty, ensure fair tax
and trade systems and support agro-ecological farming. He has earned a
legion of admirers from his commitment to ethical principles and
courage in addressing global inequalities.
Dorota Sienkiewicz
Dorota Sienkiewicz has Master’s degrees in psychology from Polish and
Dutch universities and subsequently specialised in International Public
Health. She is the European Public Health Alliance’s Coordinator for
Health Equity and Policy Coherence, focusing on health challenges from
a social and economic perspective and on the impact of EU policies on
health equity in Europe and beyond. She works on advocacy and policy
issues related to conditions for early-life development (children’s health),
public-health aspects of agriculture, food policy and non-communicable
diseases, inequalities, poverty and social exclusion.

41. Magda Stoczkiewicz
Magda has been Director of Friends of the Earth Europe since March
2008, and has 13 years’ senior-management experience in non-profit
organisations. She has advanced knowledge of campaigning on
environmental, social and governance issues as well as of human-rights
and development aspects, coupled with 14 years’ experience of the
intricacies of the EU policy-making framework. Magda is Polish and
graduated from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow with an MA,
afterwards continuing with post-degree studies in public relations and
European affairs. She is one of the founders of the environmental
organisation in Central Eastern Europe – CEE Bankwatch Network –
where she worked for 12 years in Poland, Amsterdam and Brussels.
Professor Athanasios Tsaftaris
Professor Tsaftaris is the Minister of Rural Development and Food in
Greece. He is a Professor of Genetics and Plant Breeding at the Aristotle
University of Thessaloniki, a Member of the Board of Directors for the
Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (CE.R.T.H.), Director of the
Institute of Applied Biosciences and Chair of the Department of Genetics
and Plant Breeding at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Professor
Tsaftaris holds two doctorate degrees – one in the area of Quantitative
Genetics and Plant Breeding and the other in the area of Plant Molecular
Biology and Biotechnology. He is active on many committees and in
many scientific organisations and associations in Greece, the EU, OECD
and the UN.

42. Myrsini Tzani
Myrsini is a graduate of the School of Veterinary Medicine at the
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and has completed postgraduate
studies at the National School of Public Health in Athens. From 1995 to
2002, she worked as a private veterinarian for pets. Since 2002, she has
been working at the General Veterinary Directorate of the Hellenic
Ministry of Rural Development and Food at the Department of Zoonoses,
part of the Animal Health Directorate. She is a national expert on
zoonotic salmonella, and since January 2012 has been the Head of the
Department of Zoonoses and the focal point of the EFSA Task Forces for
Zoonoses Data Collection, for Antimicrobial Resistance and for
Foodborne Outbreaks.
Dr Mary Yannakoulia
Dr Mary Yannakoulia is Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Eating
Behaviour in the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Harokopio
University, Athens, Greece. She has been involved on many projects as a
principal investigator, co-investigator and researcher; part of national or
international collaborations, these projects investigate factors that
influence human eating behaviors and people’s adherence to
interventions. Last year, she represented Greece in the High Level Group
on Nutrition and Physical Activity of the European Commission.

43. Rosita Zilli
Rosita Zilli is Deputy Secretary-General at Euro Coop, the European
Community of Consumer Co-operatives. In this capacity, she is in charge
of following general co-operative issues as well as sustainability policy
dossiers. In this area, she co-ordinates the meetings of the Euro Coop
Sustainability Working Group, which groups people in charge of the
environmental and sustainability portfolio within the different consumer
co-operatives. Rosita Zilli holds a degree in International Affairs and
Diplomacy from the University of Trieste (Italy), and prior to her post at
Euro Coop, she worked in the international co-operation field in Bosnia
and Herzegovina.
Please note that all speaker
presentations can be accessed here.

44. With thanks to:
The Hellenic Presidency of the
Council of the European Union
And our speakers, moderators and participants.
You made Averting Farmageddon an incredible event.
We look forward to working with you in the future.

45. And special congratulations to Dr Olivier De Schutter
A champion of compassionate and fair food for all
Winner of the inaugural
Compassion in World Farming Food Revolutionary Award 2014

46. Compassion in World Farming is proud to be
part of the sustainable-farming community,
accelerating the transition towards a global food
system that nourishes people and the planet.
Averting Farmageddon: Sustainable Food for All
was a truly pivotal moment for us, as we look to
influence policy in Europe and beyond.