THE CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS - IFEAT

Socio-Economic Impact of NaturalsAnd to that effect, we would like to launch a study and I will very briefly go into what we would liketo do. We recently briefly outlined this to some members of the IFEAT Executive Committee, but weunderstand that the way we did our socio-economic analysis for the fragrance industry would not begood for the naturals, because it is a totally different ball game. You are more about how does afarmer/smallholder live off naturals. It has got nothing to do with the number of jobs in retail, or thenumber of jobs in manufacturing by the large multinational companies, but its more about howresilient is a farmer to any kind of change that would be imposed on him by any new kind ofregulation. And that’s what we need to look at. So there is more granularity, and it needs to be moredefined at a very local level.Justifying Our Regulatory Needs• Illuminating the Commission on the socioeconomicimpact of the naturals (plusenvironmental)– The socio-economic impacts (Vulnerable groups)– The commitment of the producers to the issue• The producers are “doing the right thing”• Engaging with global agencies– Putting structure on current achievements– Gaining recognition• Commission – protecting the vulnerableand joined-up policy thinking27Background/AdditionalConsiderations• High Value Agricultural (HVA) Products not welladdressed in literature– No immediately identifiable literature on impacts– Will need to develop specific criteria and outputs• Flavour and fragrance materials not subject tofresh food safety requirements• Traditional jobs and gross value added (GVA)not appropriate metrics for developing countries28230