European rules, French norms, Mercosur standards: a dangerous dissonance

Running through the entire December crisis is a structural contradiction that farmers know all too well: French agricultural norms are stricter than European ones — and vastly more stringent than Mercosur standards — yet French farmers compete in the same market.

France has long chosen higher requirements on animal welfare, traceability, antibiotic use, pesticide restrictions, and environmental protection. These norms are not accidental; they are political choices shaped by public health concerns, consumer expectations, and past food safety crises. They come with real costs: more paperwork, slower production cycles, higher feed and compliance expenses, and tighter margins.

At the European Union level, however, harmonisation often means compromise. Some French standards exceed EU minimums, placing French farmers at a structural disadvantage even within the single market. What farmers tolerate — barely — inside Europe becomes explosive when extended beyond it.

This is where European Union policy collides head-on with the Mercosur agreement.

Under Mercosur, agricultural products from South America — including beef — would enter the European market under standards that do not meet French norms. Differences include permitted veterinary substances, environmental regulations, deforestation-linked production, and traceability requirements. From a farmer’s perspective, this is not free trade; it is regulatory asymmetry.

The dissonance deepens when health enters the equation.

French farmers are currently ordered to cull entire herds in the name of sanitary excellence, export credibility, and disease containment. At the same time, they watch political leaders prepare to import products raised under looser health and biosecurity regimes. That contradiction undermines the legitimacy of every harsh measure imposed domestically. It sends a simple message — unintended, perhaps, but loud: the rules are absolute for you, negotiable elsewhere.

There is also a consumer health dimension. European citizens are told that strict standards protect them from foodborne risk, excessive antibiotic residues, and environmental contamination. Yet trade agreements risk outsourcing those very risks beyond Europe’s borders, only to re-import them indirectly through finished products. From a systems perspective, this is incoherent: biosecurity is treated as national, while trade is treated as abstract.

December’s unrest exposed this fault line brutally. Farmers are not rejecting Europe as an idea. They are rejecting a model in which they are asked to absorb the highest costs of regulation, endure the harshest enforcement, and bear the moral responsibility for food safety — while political institutions dilute those standards at the border.

Until that contradiction is resolved, every animal health crisis will carry a second, quieter infection: the erosion of trust. And no vaccination campaign can fix that.