As a key finding in this year’s EPI-scoring, air quality keeps deteriorating human health in such a manner that it is considered as “…the leading environmental threat to public health” (EPI, 2018). The exposure of pollution and its particles from e.g. heavy traffic is a contributing factor. In Sweden, the transporting sector constitutes 1/3 of the total CO2 emissions.

Back in 1991, I attended a big “Does Socialism Have a Future?” conference hosted by my alma mater, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The session I remember most vividly featured a Hungarian dissident, a poet, ridiculing ineffective communist propaganda. “Communists”, he told a sympathetic audience, “tried to convince us that jeans can cause impotence in young males and that Coca Cola is bad for people’s health”.

The Environmental Performance Indicator (EPI), a list produced by Yale University and Columbia University, has revealed the scoring of 180 countries and their performance regarding Ecosystem Vitality (the protection of natural resource services) and Environmental Health (i.e. progress in air pollution or protection of drinking waters that can endanger human health if not considered).

It is that time of a year when we take time to reflect upon our flaws and weaknesses to find areas where we can make positive changes for the New Year. In our imagination, there is an old self who we will leave behind on the New Year’s Eve, and we will welcome our new 2018 self, healthier, wiser, and most importantly, happier. All it takes is to come up with that magical set of resolutions that will help us achieve all that, though many of us probably will not need to come up with original New Year’s resolutions.

Food safety has become an important aspect of agricultural policy for many countries (see, e.g., CAP). By definition, “Food safety refers to the conditions and practices that preserve the quality of food to prevent contamination and foodborne illnesses.” In other words, food safety aims to protect the health of humans, animals and plants at every stage of the food production chain in conformance with the "farm-to-table” principle established by the EU.