Majority of EU countries ask bloc to scale back deforestation law

Some 20 members of the European Union asked Brussels to scale back and possibly suspend the bloc’s anti-deforestation law on Tuesday, saying the policy
would harm farmers, in the latest blowback against Europe’s environmental agenda.
The EU law aims to root deforestation out of supply chains for beef, soy and other agricultural products sold in Europe, so that European consumers are not contributing to the destruction of global forests from the Amazon to Southeast Asia.
Those rules equally apply to European farmers, who will be banned from exporting products cultivated on deforested or degraded woodlands.
Agriculture ministers from 20 of the EU’s 27 member countries supported a call by Austria to revise the law, at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, Austria’s agriculture minister Norbert Totschnig said.