Journal articles on the topic 'Liability for environmental damages – European Union countries'

In recent years, the law on environmental damage compensation has been a burning issue in many countries around the world, especially in developing nations where the dilemma concerns the balance between economic development and environmental protection. The issue of liability for environmental damage can be considered from many perspectives, and the focus of this study will be civil liability compensation. Learning and studying the regulations of developed countries like the European Union plays an important role in the development and improvement of environmental laws in general and the law on environmental compensation in particular for Vietnam. In this article, the authors provide insights on some legal provisions on compensation for environmental damage based on comparison with the laws of the European Union to determine how to develop legal regulations in the field of environmental damage compensation. This creates a foundation that contributes to the introduction of solutions to improve the efficiency of the law on environmental damage compensation in Vietnam.

The purpose of this study is to determine the ratio of the legislative mechanisms of administrative and criminal liability for violation of environmental legislation in the legal system of the European Union. Using the methods of political and legal analysis, the comparative legal method and the structure designmethod, the study examines the features of the formation and structure of EU legislative mechanisms in the field of legal regulation of liability for violations of environmental legislation. At the same time, existing problems faced by legislators from the point of view of law enforcement practice in different countries of the European Union are also considered. In the EU, considerable attention is paid to the vector of environmental protection at the supranational level, as well as to the implementation of the acquis communautaire of the environmental legislation into national legislative norms. Nevertheless, the institutions of the European Union have not yet been able to fully achieve complete uniformity with regard to the established environmental liability regime and, accordingly, overcome the difficulties associated with the effective interaction of EU legislation and the realities of national legal systems. At the same time, in European law enforcement practice, administrative measures in matters of environmental responsibility are given preference over measures of criminal responsibility. To date, as evidenced by the study, EU legislators adhere to the position regarding the assignment of criminal prosecution obligations to the national authorities, which is due to the flexibility of law enforcement measures. environmental damage, environmental law, environmental legislation, environmental protection, environmental responsibility, European Union, supranational policy

Traditionally, common lawyers are used to examining other jurisdictions of their legal family as a source of inspiration for law reform or even as persuasive authority for the development of case law. Developments in continental civil law jurisdictions are less noted. However, particularly in the field of public law, English law is now being influenced by civil law concepts through the mediation of Community law.1 Product liability provides an example in private law of rules shared by the civil and common law jurisdictions of the European Union due to harmonisation by the Product Liability Directive. An important new area of non-contractual liability is environmental liability. Firmly established in the United States, liability for damage to the environment is increasingly being introduced in many countries around the world.3 In the European Union, the first step towards Community-wide legislation was taken in March 1993 with the publication of a Green Paper by the Commission.4 One of the many controversial aspects of a possible environmental liability regime is the issue of standing to sue.

The paper focuses on formal and practical problems in the field of environmental protection, which occur as a consequence of omissions of the legislative and executive authorities in Serbia. The text analyzes the positive legislation and compliance of domestic legal regulations with international declarations and conventions ratified by our country (from the Stockholm Declaration and the Council of Europe Convention on Civil Liability for Damage Caused by Dangerous Activities to the Environment to the Rio Declaration), as well as with European Directives (EU Directive on Industrial Emissions) and Regulations (Regulation No. 525/2013 on monitoring and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and reporting on other information relevant to climate change). The candidacy for equal membership in the European family of nations obliges the Serbian Parliament and the Government to make additional efforts in the direction of harmonizing our law with the European one. The paper takes a de lege ferenda approach, so the author explains the need to amend a number of laws, such as the Law on Environmental Impact Assessment, the Law on Strategic Environmental Assessment, the Law on Fees for the Use of Public Goods and the Law on Budget system, as well as the enactment of the Law on Climate Change and the Serbian Civil Code as soon as possible (in which dilemmas that hinder the subjects of law in using the environmental lawsuit as an instrument of environmental protection should be resolved). An unacceptable deviation from one of the fundamental principles established by the Rio Declaration was pointed out, which brings with it a number of structural problems and the inability of both the Green Fund institutions and a number of organizations that focus on ecology. The consequences of the discrepancy between the intentions proclaimed by the Constitution of Serbia and the National Strategy of Serbia for the accession of Serbia and Montenegro to the European Union from 2005 on the one hand and the absence of adequate legislative and executive activities in environmental protection, on the other hand, are obvious in the reports of the European Commission and the European Environment Office, as well as in the health risk and increased mortality of a large number of citizens of Serbia and other European countries, due to harmful emissions that cause pollution of air, water and soil in our country. In addition to the proposals for changes in the formal framework in the field of environmental protection, the paper points out the need to use those mechanisms of civil protection, such as environmental lawsuits (established by the Law on Obligations 1978), which is, by its nature, actio popularis and in that sense accessible to the widest range of subjects. The defense of the standards established by the Kyoto Protocol and the Basel Convention would, through the extensive use of this procedural instrument, be placed not only in the hands of representatives of the legislature and the executive, but also, the judiciary (conditionally, of course, because courts can decide only initiate a civil action, but not on its own initiative).

The New EU Directive on Environmental Liability provides for the system of liability for damage to the environment provoked by human activity. The Directive further provides for direct application of polluter-pays principles, the concept of environmental damage and a variety of preventive and remedial actions. The underlying principle of the Directive is the establishment of financial liability of the operators whose actions provoke environmental damage or the danger of occurrence of the environmental damage, all with the aim to stimulate such operators to adopt appropriate measures and procedures to diminish of environmental risks and therefore decrease their disposure to the environmental liability. Directive is applicable to the operators of the ?regulated activities?, which includes the majority of industries. Directive is relating only to the future environmental damages occurred after its entry in force. Directive adopts strict liability for the operators of the activities dangerous to the environment applicable to any and all environmental damage, whereas for the operators of all other activities the fault-based liability applies and only in respect to the environmental damage of the ecosystem. Operators are not liable for damage provoked by third party, damage occurred regardless of the implementation of the appropriate protection procedures or damage in case of a force majeure event. Also, operators can waive responsibility invoking the so-called ?state of art defense?, i.e. arguing that the harmful action was considered environmental friendly by the time of its occurrence. Another waiver from the responsibility, the so-called permit defense is possible in case whereof environmental damage is provoked by the action which was made in accordance with the issued permit/state authorization. Directive obliges the operators to inform relevant authorities of environmental damage risks which occur due to the operators? activities, as well as to undertake appropriate measures of control, limitation, security, removal of harmful effects and risk/damage management. Directive defines the preventive measures as the measures instituted in response to an event, action or failure to act which created the threat of environmental damage, which measures aim to prevent or mitigate the consequences of such environmental damage. Directive further defines remedial measures as measures or combination of measures, including risk/damage management and provisional measures, with the aim to revoke, rehabilitate or replace damaged natural resources. Directive recommends to the Member States to encourage the operators to contract appropriate insurances and other financial cover from liability. Bearing in mind the development of environmental liability issue, it is uncertain whether and how will the insurance companies build new insurance policies in alternative to the classical insurance from civil responsibility which is only in small part applicable to the environmental damages. The same can be said for the financial market itself, knowing that the entire success of the Directive depends on the financial capacities of the operators to assume the liabilities introduced by the Directive. Pursuant to the Directive, companies shall have to bear themselves the risks of removal of consequences of environmental damage. We are of opinion that a respectable company cannot afford non-cooperation with the authorities, otherwise it risks refusal of work permits, investigations and inspections, refusal of state loans and other benefits. In the aim of prevention of environmental damage, the company management would need to develop internal rules and regulations on environmental protection and environmental policy of the company. Although we admit that Directive creates some preconditions for efficient and uniform implementation of the environmental protection and the achievement of sustainable development within the EU, we believe that Directive can help the prevention of environmental damage only in combination with corresponding fiscal and administrative privilege given to the companies willing to introduce and apply preventive environmental measures.

EU Law – Member State liability in damages – Issues of protective scope about exactly which individuals/interests are protected – Conditions for Member State liability – Intention to confer rights criterion – Tendency towards a ‘checklist’ approach by the Court of Justice of the European Union – Potential implications for scope of Member State liability – Finding appropriate balance between protecting individuals and punishing public bodies – Example of free movement rights – Example of environmental legislation – Example of employment legislation

ABSTRACT Recently, there have been a number of key developments related to oil spill-related liability worldwide. These developments include: the recent expansion of damages under the European Union Environmental Liability Directive to all marine water; proposed changes to the Canadian offshore oil legislation that would allow for the specific recovery of environmental damages; implementation of US legislation which directs recovered funds from an oil spill to be used in the affected area; and more. This paper will identify and describe the various environmental liability regimes in different regions of the world which contain requirements for the restoration of natural resources affected by these incidents. The paper also will highlight similarities and differences among these regimes, as well as some of the synergies in actual practice. In addition, and to the extent possible, the paper will provide some of the lessons learned and best practices relative to the determining environmental damage liability under the different regimes.

The influence of the Nordic countries on the European Union’s (EU's) policy processes has been researched from various angles, but there is a lack of research that comprehensively examines all policy positions advanced by Nordic actors within a given policy context. This article introduces a new design for studying policy positions and influence in the EU and examines the phenomenon from a multilevel perspective using an original data set compiled in connection to three directives: the Floods Directive on the assessment and management of flood risks, the Environmental Liability Directive, and the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive. The analysis reveals that the Nordic countries follow a certain pattern of influencing EU policy that deviates from other states participating in the consultations. Nordic governmental actors exert a strong technical but weak directional influence in the chosen context but are, overall, more successful than Nordic organizational actors at influencing the policy process.

"One of the most important issues in the design of national work injury compensation systems is how the two main possible routes of liability relate: on the one hand, the non-tort compensation (social security) model and, on the other, the tort compensation (employers’ liability under civil or labour law) model. In the Hungarian system of accident compensation in labour law, the employee is primarily entitled to certain benefits within the framework of social insurance and may claim damages in excess of this in damages lawsuits. Employers’ liability schemes can be supplemented by voluntary liability insurance solutions. Liability insurance contracts protect both parties: employers are protected against unplanned payments, possibly large amounts of compensation, and the outcome of potentially unpredictable compensation lawsuits, while it means guaranteed coverage for the employee in case of damage. The introduction of compulsory liability insurance for employers is an issue that arises from time to time. In some countries, employers are required to take out liability insurance, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Austria. In insurance-based models, the route of compensation plays a marginal role. In Hungary, the penetration of liability insurance is low; however, there is currently no legislative intention to make liability insurance more extensive or mandatory for employers. In general, however, there is no universal model for accident compensation in labour law. There is no such benchmark at the European Union level either, and it can be said that there is no explicit intention to fully harmonize Member State regulations. In this study, I examine the consequences of the mandatory or wider application of liability insurance, the regulatory concepts that exist, and the role that the European Union plays in regulating the issue."

By comparative analysis of the bases of liability for damages and the scope of the right to compensation for damages arising from traffic accidents existing in the legislation of the countries that are undergoing transition, the author reaches a conclusion that the process of overcoming the disadvantages of the former legislative solutions is going on slowly and that significant differences are noticed in respect of the level of protection of the injured person. In comparison to these jurisdictions, the present Yugoslav law, especially the solutions accepted in court practice, prove to be much more comprehensive. With the existing changes of the insurance law and with improved efficiency of the judicial protection, Yugoslav legislation could be more successfully adapted to the standards of the European Union.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic exhausted healthcare systems around the world, including European Union countries, with healthcare workers at the frontline. Therefore, new health laws and policies have been introduced at the national level in order to offer greater legal protection for health workers. Since the introduction of COVID-19 vaccination, it has led to the development of specific laws to define the compulsoriness for particular categories. This review aimed to evaluate the system of medical liability, focusing on the ten countries of the European Union with the highest rate of vaccination coverage against SARS-CoV-2. A country-by-country analysis was conducted on the different medical liability systems of individual professionals, in general, and with specific focus on the vaccinating doctors. Additional search was conducted to investigate which European states have introduced specific policies in this field, to identify the implementation of any new laws alongside the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns, and to assess which countries have adopted the European Digital COVID Certificate and funded specific compensation programs for COVID-19 vaccination. Our results highlight an extremely fragmented European scenario; therefore, this work could be a starting point to define a common approach for medical liability and related policies in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Within the European Union, the Rome II Regulation determines the applicable law on cross-border matters of non-contractual nature. The paper examines the applicable law on environmental-related tort claims against European multi-national companies utilizing production facilities in third countries, either based on active misconduct or on alleged omission of environment-related due diligence. As these types of claims are an expression of misconduct by multinational corporations conducting business abroad, particular notice will be given to the applicable law on compensation claims for environmental damages allegedly caused by negligent compliance for environmental standards of either independent or subsidiary production facilities. While doing so, its main point of interest will be whether claims against European-based companies may be governed by the law of the effective seat of the latter. Considering that Article 7 Rome II provides for a special connecting factor regarding environmental damages, the paper examines whether Rome II does justice for due diligence-related cases on the conflict of laws level and argues for a nuanced approach to localize the place of the event giving rise to such damages. Private International Law, Environmental Damages, Civil Compensation, Torts, Corporate Social Responsibility, Rome II, Mandatory Rules, Public policy

Liability insurance for environmental damages has been existing in some European countries and in the United States for more than a hundred years. In the Republic of Serbia, however, this type of insurance is still quite underdeveloped. The subject matter of this paper is the analysis of, according to the authors' opinion, two most important issues of liability insurance for damages arising out of the harmful influence on the environment. The first question is who is capable of being an insured person in this type of insurance and the second one, what represents an insured risk and how it should be described when formulating an insurance policy. In the paper these two aspects have been analyzed according to the applicable laws of the Republic of Serbia, relevant international documents and general and specific terms and conditions of domestic and foreign insurance companies.

Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia, like many other Central and Eastern European states, underwent profound economic and legal reform in 1989 and early 1990s with the harmonization of their legal system with the EU acquis along with democratic reform of the political system. In this period international conventions, especially ILO standards, were the main source of inspiration. In all three countries strikes are regarded as a last resort, and certain procedures must be implemented to call a lawful strike. The first formal requirement in Polish and Slovak law concerns the reason for a collective dispute: work and employment conditions as well as trade union freedoms and rights or conclusion of a collective agreement. The next requirement concerns the parties to the dispute: workers must be represented by trade unions (except in Hungary). They cannot initiate a collective dispute individually (even if the outcome would subsequently concern all the employees) or through another representative body such as works councils or employee representatives. The proportionality principle must be respected with regard to the demands of strikers and those organizing the strike may be liable for damages. Workers taking part in unlawful strikes may be subject to the sanctions laid down in labour law, such as disciplinary sanctions, dismissal or pecuniary sanctions if damage is caused. Provision for criminal liability is made only in the Polish legal system. They are construed so that many acts of employers or trade unionists representing workers in the course of collective disputes can be subject to sanctions. As far as illegal strikes are concerned, those leading an illegal strike or other protest action can be criminally liable.

AbstractMining gold with the use of cyanide has always been an inherently dangerous activity requiring strict regulatory oversight and the application of appropriate technology to prevent environmental harm. The cyanide spill from the Aurul S.A. gold-mining operation in Baia Mare, Romania, was a warning to the international community that legal and institutional regimes that should prevent and respond to such accidents may as yet not be fully developed, especially in countries in transition. In particular, the international legal regimes for industrial-accident prevention, liability, and foreign direct investment must be considered as a whole in order to identify gaps and weaknesses in the system that should be addressed in the effort to protect human health and the environment from such accidents. In addition, the gap between legal requirements and commitment to, and capacity for, implementation—especially in transition countries—must be addressed.This article addresses the need to bring attention to the international legal implications of the Baia Mare accident. First, the article sets the stage by briefly identifying the positive responses that the accident has evoked from Romanian and international stakeholders, indicating that steps have already been taken to strengthen the institutional and legal framework governing mining operations. Then, the international legal obligations of Romania at the time of the accident are examined, followed by the identification of international conventions to which Romania was not party at the time of the accident and that could have helped prevent the accident. Gaps in the international legal regimes relevant to the accident are also identified and recommendations are made for filling them, including principles of environmental governance for foreign investors in countries in transition. Recommendations are also made for addressing the issue of implementation.The accident at Baia Mare has resulted in a number of positive responses—both domestically in Romania, as well as regionally and at a broader European level—and it is incumbent upon stakeholders to continue to expand the scope of social learning that the accident has made available. Actions taken in Romania after the spill include closer cooperation between local/regional officials and environmental nongovernmental organizations and a generally increased sensitivity among NGOs to the dangers inherent in mining activities. NGOs have now assumed watchdog and public-education roles. Responses at the European level include greater transboundary cooperation in river management and a strong push by the European Union to amend the Seveso II Directive on industrial-accident prevention to cover mining operations.Romania was not party to several key international conventions that could conceivably, if implemented, have prevented or minimized the effects of the accident at Baia Mare or provided for a more effective long-term response. These include the Convention on the Transboundary Effects of Industrial Accidents and the Convention on the Law of the Non-navigational Uses of International Watercourses. In addition to international legal instruments to which Romania was not party, there are also European Union directives that Romania has not yet transposed into domestic law. As a country seeking to join the European Union, transposition of EU legislation is a high priority for Romania. Priority should be given to the Seveso II Directive, which seeks to prevent industrial accidents, and the directive on integrated pollution prevention and control, which requires the use of the best available technology to prevent discharges.Gaps and weaknesses in international law fall into three main categories: industrial-accident prevention, liability for environmental harm, and foreign direct investment.

This paper aims to evaluate the situation of dumping grounds in some regions of the world and to size its impact on the expectations of the European Union (EU) to achieve sustainable development. It traces intersections of international trade theory, European law, and the principle of sustainable development with the practice of major global players, focusing on the EU. The dumping grounds in third countries gives room for questioning the opportunities and threats that the European block faces to achieve environmental sustainability and how the very countries of Europe, as importers and exporters of fast-fashion clothes are co-responsible for the environmental drama faced by other countries that deal with these products, which become waste. The purpose of this research is therefore to analyze the effectiveness of the principle of sustainable development in the final stage of the production chain of fast-fashion clothing, seeking to bring an analysis centered on international and European law. As for the research method adopted here, it is developed through bibliographic and documental analysis and a case study. The development of the work is divided into three chapters. The first seeks to compare environmental conventions on the subject. The second chapter analyzes the production cycle of fast-fashion clothing, the countries and entities involved, and the accentuated waste production in a panorama of international transactions. The last chapter seeks to examine the actions of the EU to curb similar practices, where there is accountability in the European and international market for damages committed to the environment also in third countries. It concludes that there is a possible European success in enacting a due diligence directive with a specific scope to curb market practices that continuously produce products and exempt themselves from responsibility for their final destination, thus disregarding the sustainability of the environment.

Purpose. Analysis of national and foreign experience in solving the problem of chemical pollution of surface waters and its economic consequences in accordance with the provisions of European legislation. Methods. System analysis. Results. Selection of the optimal set of biotesting methods for assessing the environmental consequences of chemical pollution of surface waters; study of the system of environmental liability, which operates in European and other foreign countries, and national regulations on the recovery of damages for violations of water legislation. The analysis of foreign and national sources on the use of biotesting techniques to assess the ecological status of surface waters and determine the toxic properties of water and chemicals. In world practice, a biotesting method is used to obtain data on the effects of hazardous toxic chemicals on aquatic ecosystems. Biotests are available and cheap (when using specially designed modifications for practical needs), do not require special training of performers and can be easily mastered in practical laboratories. Conclusions. To assess and control the quality of surface waters and their sources of pollution in accordance with the recommendations of the Water Framework Directive 2000/60 / EC, biotesting techniques are used using a "basic set of taxa" - algae, crustaceans and fish.

Abstract The concept of just transition is included in the texts that establish the energy policy of the European Union (EU), in particular in the texts relating to the European Green Deal. The idea refers to the need to compensate the inhabitants of those regions where coal-fired power plants or coalmines are closed, to try to maintain employment and activity. There is a proposal for a regulation that establishes a Just Transition Fund, as the main element of the Just Transition Mechanism. The fund is the focus in coal areas. This norm is inserted in the set of norms for the reconstruction of Europe (NextGenerationEU). The same idea of just transition is found in the laws that various European countries have passed (or are proposing to pass), such as the UK, Germany, Spain and Poland. It is assumed that energy justice requires that in those areas where new forms of electricity production are being implemented, using renewable sources of energy, which displace coal, workers must be compensated. This perspective is the one that has become general, due to the influence of the energy policy of the EU and its law. This article does also show that limiting the just transition to coal problems is inadequate, since the transition generates other problems related to energy justice (such as the implementation of renewable facilities in rural areas, environmental impacts, energy poverty, etc). In other words, the article highlights that there are several potential winners and losers in the energy transition, other than coal regions and workers. To illustrate that idea we pick three remarkable examples: (i) the mining of lithium, since it is a key for electric mobility, but can create environmental and/or social problems; (ii) damages to rural areas from wind or sun installations (iii) and the increase of energy poverty.

As visões da Carta de Atenas (1933) assumiram caráter dogmático, influenciando profundamente as nossas cidades. A proposição da cidade funcional como crítica às cidades tradicionais definia funções básicas: habitar, trabalhar, recrear e circular. Frente à considerada obsolescência do tecido urbano existente, impunha-se uma nova ordem, implicando, em termos formais, em um produto homogêneo. Nas últimas décadas emerge a discussão do conceito chamado desenvolvimento sustentável, que objetiva a manutenção da qualidade de vida, assegura acesso continuo aos recursos naturais e evita a persistência dos danos ambientais. Sob esse enfoque, a Nova Carta de Atenas (1998), resultado da discussão de onze países da Comunidade Européia, delineia temas emergentes. O trabalho traz um breve panorama do repensar urbano, apresenta os princípios, o paradigma proposto e delineia considerações sobre a Nova Carta. From ancient charter to the new Charter of Athens − a search of a spatial paradigm of sustainability Abstract The visions of 1933 Athens Charter assumed a dogmatic character that is continually influencing our cities. The proposal of a functional city, as a critic of traditional spaces, was defined by its basic functions: dwelling, work (or production), recreation and transportation. Facing the existing obsolete urban tissue, a new order was imposed, having as result a homogeneous space, in formal terms. In the last decades the discussion of the concept of sustainable development has emerged aiming as maintaining life quality, ensuring continuous accessibility to the natural resources and avoiding the environmental damages. As a consequence, the 1998 Athens New Charter, resulting from the discussion of eleven countries of European Union witch defines an emergencies has emerged thematic. This paper deals with a brief panorama of the urban re-thinking, present the set of recommendations, expose the paradigm and outline considerations of the New Charter.

During World War II, the Soviet Union’s food supply was in a state of crisis. Hitler’s army had occupied the agricultural heartlands of Ukraine and Southern Russia in 1941 and, as a result, agricultural production for the entire nation had plummeted. Soldiers in Red Army, who easily ate the best rations in the country, subsisted on a daily allowance of just under a kilogram of bread, supplemented with meat, tea, sugar and butter when and if these items were available. The hunger of the Red Army and its effect on the morale and strength of Europe’s eastern warfront were causes for concern for the Soviet government and its European and American allies. The one country with a food surplus decided to do something to help, and in 1942 the United States agreed to send thousands of pounds of meat, cheese and butter overseas to help feed the Red Army. After receiving several shipments of the all-American spiced canned meat SPAM, the Red Army’s quartermaster put in a request for a more familiar canned pork product, Russian tushonka. Pound for pound, America sent more pigs overseas than soldiers during World War II, in part because pork was in oversupply in the America of the early 1940s. Shipping meat to hungry soldiers and civilians in war torn countries was a practical way to build business for the U.S. meat industry, which had been in decline throughout the 1930s. As per a Soviet-supplied recipe, the first cans of Lend-Lease tushonka were made in the heart of the American Midwest, at meatpacking plants in Iowa and Ohio (Stettinus 6-7). Government contracts in the meat packing industry helped fuel economic recovery, and meatpackers were in a position to take special request orders like the one for tushonka that came through the lines. Unlike SPAM, which was something of a novelty item during the war, tushonka was a food with a past. The original recipe was based on a recipe for preserved meat that had been a traditional product of the Ural Mountains, preserved in jars with salt and fat rather than by pressure and heat. Thus tushonka was requested—and was mass-produced—not simply as a convenience but also as a traditional and familiar food—a taste of home cooking that soldiers could carry with them into the field. Nikita Khrushchev later claimed that the arrival of tushonka was instrumental in helping the Red Army push back against the Nazi invasion (178). Unlike SPAM and other wartime rations, tushonka did not fade away after the war. Instead, it was distributed to the Soviet civilian population, appearing in charity donations and on the shelves of state shops. Often it was the only meat product available on a regular basis. Salty, fatty, and slightly grey-toned, tushonka was an unlikely hero of the postwar-era, but during this period tushonka rose from obscurity to become an emblem of socialist modernity. Because it was shelf stable and could be made from a variety of different cuts of meat, it proved an ideal product for the socialist production lines where supplies and the pace of production were infinitely variable. Unusual in a socialist system of supply, this product shaped production and distribution lines, and even influenced the layout of meatpacking factories and the genetic stocks of the animals that were to be eaten. Tushonka’s initial ubiquity in the postwar Soviet Union had little to do with the USSR’s own hog industry. Pig populations as well as their processing facilities had been decimated in the war, and pigs that did survive the Axis invasion had been evacuated East with human populations. Instead, the early presence of tushonka in the pig-scarce postwar Soviet Union had everything to do with Harry Truman’s unexpected September 1945 decision to end all “economically useful” Lend-Lease shipments to the Soviet Union (Martel). By the end of September, canned meat was practically the only product still being shipped as part of Lend-Lease (NARA RG 59). Although the United Nations was supposed to distribute these supplies to needy civilians free of cost, travelers to the Soviet Union in 1946 spotted cans of American tushonka for sale in state shops (Skeoch 231). After American tushonka “donations” disappeared from store shelves, the Soviet Union’s meat syndicates decided to continue producing the product. Between its first appearance during the war in 1943, and the 1957 announcement by Nikita Khrushchev that Soviet policy would restructure all state animal farms to support the mass production of one or several processed meat products, tushonka helped to drive the evolution of the Soviet Union’s meat packing industry. Its popularity with both planners and the public gave it the power to reach into food commodity chains. It is this backward reach and the longer-term impacts of these policies that make tushonka an unusual byproduct of the Cold War era. State planners loved tushonka: it was cheap to make, the logistics of preparing it were not complicated, it was easy to transport, and most importantly, it served as tangible evidence that the state was accomplishing a long-standing goal to get more meat to its citizenry and improving the diet of the average Soviet worker. Tushonka became a highly visible product in the Soviet Union’s much vaunted push to establish a modern food regime intended to rival that of the United States. Because it was shelf-stable, wartime tushonka had served as a practical food for soldiers, but after the war tushonka became an ideal food for workers who had neither the time nor the space to prepare a home-cooked meal with fresh meat. The Soviet state started to produce its own tushonka because it was such an excellent fit for the needs and abilities of the Soviet state—consumer demand was rarely considered by planners in this era. Not only did tushonka fit the look and taste of a modern processed meat product (that is, it was standard in texture and flavor from can to can, and was an obviously industrially processed product), it was also an excellent way to make the most of the predominant kind of meat the Soviet Union had the in the 1950s: small scraps low-grade pork and beef, trimmings leftover from butchering practices that focused on harvesting as much animal fat, rather than muscle, from the carcass in question. Just like tushonka, pork sausages and frozen pelmeny, a meat-filled pasta dumpling, also became winning postwar foods thanks to a happy synergy of increased animal production, better butchering and new food processing machines. As postwar pigs recovered their populations, the Soviet processed meat industry followed suit. One official source listed twenty-six different kinds of meat products being issued in 1964, although not all of these were pork (Danilov). An instructional manual distributed by the meat and milk syndicate demonstrated how meat shops should wrap and display sausages, and listed 24 different kinds of sausages that all needed a special style of tying up. Because of packaging shortages, the string that bound the sausage was wrapped in a different way for every type of sausage, and shop assistants were expected to be able to identify sausages based on the pattern of their binding. Pelmeny were produced at every meat factory that processed pork. These were “made from start to finish in a special, automated machine, human hands do not touch them. Which makes them a higher quality and better (prevoskhodnogo) product” (Book of Healthy and Delicious Food). These were foods that became possible to produce economically because of a co-occurring increase in pigs, the new standardized practice of equipping meatpacking plants with large-capacity grinders, and freezers or coolers and the enforcement of a system of grading meat. As the state began to rebuild Soviet agriculture from its near-collapse during the war, the Soviet Union looked to the United States for inspiration. Surprisingly, Soviet planners found some of the United States’ more outdated techniques to be quite valuable for new Soviet hog operations. The most striking of these was the adoption of competing phenotypes in the Soviet hog industry. Most major swine varieties had been developed and described in the 19th century in Germany and Great Britain. Breeds had a tendency to split into two phenotypically distinct groups, and in early 20th Century American pig farms, there was strong disagreement as to which style of pig was better suited to industrial conditions of production. Some pigs were “hot-blooded” (in other words, fast maturing and prolific reproducers) while others were a slower “big type” pig (a self-explanatory descriptor). Breeds rarely excelled at both traits and it was a matter of opinion whether speed or size was the most desirable trait to augment. The over-emphasis of either set of qualities damaged survival rates. At their largest, big type pigs resembled small hippopotamuses, and sows were so corpulent they unwittingly crushed their tiny piglets. But the sleeker hot-blooded pigs had a similarly lethal relationship with their young. Sows often produced litters of upwards of a dozen piglets and the stress of tending such a large brood led overwhelmed sows to devour their own offspring (Long). American pig breeders had been forced to navigate between these two undesirable extremes, but by the 1930s, big type pigs were fading in popularity mainly because butter and newly developed plant oils were replacing lard as the cooking fat of preference in American kitchens. The remarkable propensity of the big type to pack on pounds of extra fat was more of a liability than a benefit in this period, as the price that lard and salt pork plummeted in this decade. By the time U.S. meat packers were shipping cans of tushonka to their Soviet allies across the seas, US hog operations had already developed a strong preference for hot-blooded breeds and research had shifted to building and maintaining lean muscle on these swiftly maturing animals. When Soviet industrial planners hoping to learn how to make more tushonka entered the scene however, their interpretation of american efficiency was hardly predictable: scientifically nourished big type pigs may have been advantageous to the United States at midcentury, but the Soviet Union’s farms and hungry citizens had a very different list of needs and wants. At midcentury, Soviet pigs were still handicapped by old-fashioned variables such as cold weather, long winters, poor farm organisation and impoverished feed regimens. The look of the average Soviet hog operation was hardly industrial. In 1955 the typical Soviet pig was petite, shaggy, and slow to reproduce. In the absence of robust dairy or vegetable oil industries, Soviet pigs had always been valued for their fat rather than their meat, and tushonka had been a byproduct of an industry focused mainly on supplying the country with fat and lard. Until the mid 1950s, the most valuable pig on many Soviet state and collective farms was the nondescript but very rotund “lard and bacon” pig, an inefficient eater that could take upwards of two years to reach full maturity. In searching for a way to serve up more tushonka, Soviet planners became aware that their entire industry needed to be revamped. When the Soviet Union looked to the United States, planners were inspired by the earlier competition between hot-blooded and big type pigs, which Soviet planners thought, ambitiously, they could combine into one splendid pig. The Soviet Union imported new pigs from Poland, Lithuania, East Germany and Denmark, trying valiantly to create hybrid pigs that would exhibit both hot blood and big type. Soviet planners were especially interested in inspiring the Poland-China, an especially rotund specimen, to speed up its life cycle during them mid 1950s. Hybrdizing and cross breeding a Soviet super-pig, no matter how closely laid out on paper, was probably always a socialist pipe dream. However, when the Soviets decided to try to outbreed American hog breeders, they created an infrastructure for pigs and pig breeding that had a dramatic positive impact of hog populations across the country, and the 1950s were marked by a large increase in the number of pigs in the Soviet union, as well as dramatic increases in the numbers of purebred and scientific hybrids the country developed, all in the name of tushonka. It was not just the genetic stock that received a makeover in the postwar drive to can more tushonka; a revolution in the barnyard also took place and in less than 10 years, pigs were living in new housing stock and eating new feed sources. The most obvious postwar change was in farm layout and the use of building space. In the early 1950s, many collective farms had been consolidated. In 1940 there were a quarter of a million kolkhozii, by 1951 fewer than half that many remained (NARA RG166). Farm consolidation movements most often combined two, three or four collective farms into one economic unit, thus scaling up the average size and productivity of each collective farm and simplifying their administration. While there were originally ambitious plans to re-center farms around new “agro-city” bases with new, modern farm buildings, these projects were ultimately abandoned. Instead, existing buildings were repurposed and the several clusters of farm buildings that had once been the heart of separate villages acquired different uses. For animals this meant new barns and new daily routines. Barns were redesigned and compartmentalized around ideas of gender and age segregation—weaned baby pigs in one area, farrowing sows in another—as well as maximising growth and health. Pigs spent less outside time and more time at the trough. Pigs that were wanted for different purposes (breeding, meat and lard) were kept in different areas, isolated from each other to minimize the spread of disease as well as improve the efficiency of production. Much like postwar housing for humans, the new and improved pig barn was a crowded and often chaotic place where the electricity, heat and water functioned only sporadically. New barns were supposed to be mechanised. In some places, mechanisation had helped speed things along, but as one American official viewing a new mechanised pig farm in 1955 noted, “it did not appear to be a highly efficient organisation. The mechanised or automated operations, such as the preparation of hog feed, were eclipsed by the amount of hand labor which both preceded and followed the mechanised portion” (NARA RG166 1961). The American official estimated that by mechanizing, Soviet farms had actually increased the amount of human labor needed for farming operations. The other major environmental change took place away from the barnyard, in new crops the Soviet Union began to grow for fodder. The heart and soul of this project was establishing field corn as a major new fodder crop. Originally intended as a feed for cows that would replace hay, corn quickly became the feed of choice for raising pigs. After a visit by a United States delegation to Iowa and other U.S. farms over the summer of 1955, corn became the centerpiece of Khrushchev’s efforts to raise meat and milk productivity. These efforts were what earned Khrushchev his nickname of kukuruznik, or “corn fanatic.” Since so little of the Soviet Union looks or feels much like the plains and hills of Iowa, adopting corn might seem quixotic, but raising corn was a potentially practical move for a cold country. Unlike the other major fodder crops of turnips and potatoes, corn could be harvested early, while still green but already possessing a high level of protein. Corn provided a “gap month” of green feed during July and August, when grazing animals had eaten the first spring green growth but these same plants had not recovered their biomass. What corn remained in the fields in late summer was harvested and made into silage, and corn made the best silage that had been historically available in the Soviet Union. The high protein content of even silage made from green mass and unripe corn ears prevented them from losing weight in the winter. Thus the desire to put more meat on Soviet tables—a desire first prompted by American food donations of surplus pork from Iowa farmers adapting to agro-industrial reordering in their own country—pushed back into the commodity supply network of the Soviet Union. World War II rations that were well adapted to the uncertainty and poor infrastructure not just of war but also of peacetime were a source of inspiration for Soviet planners striving to improve the diets of citizens. To do this, they purchased and bred more and better animals, inventing breeds and paying attention, for the first time, to the efficiency and speed with which these animals were ready to become meat. Reinventing Soviet pigs pushed even back farther, and inspired agricultural economists and state planners to embrace new farm organizational structures. Pigs meant for the tushonka can spent more time inside eating, and led their lives in a rigid compartmentalization that mimicked emerging trends in human urban society. Beyond the barnyard, a new concern with feed-to weight conversions led agriculturalists to seek new crops; crops like corn that were costly to grow but were a perfect food for a pig destined for a tushonka tin. Thus in Soviet industrialization, pigs evolved. No longer simply recyclers of human waste, socialist pigs were consumers in their own right, their newly crafted genetic compositions demanded ever more technical feed sources in order to maximize their own productivity. Food is transformative, and in this case study the prosaic substance of canned meat proved to be unusually transformative for the history of the Soviet Union. In its early history it kept soldiers alive long enough to win an important war, later the requirements for its manufacture re-prioritized muscle tissue over fat tissue in the disassembly of carcasses. This transformative influence reached backwards into the supply lines and farms of the Soviet Union, revolutionizing the scale and goals of farming and meat packing for the Soviet food industry, as well as the relationship between the pig and the consumer. References Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. Where: University of Illinois Press, 1998. The Book of Healthy and Delicious Food, Kniga O Vkusnoi I Zdorovoi Pishche. Moscow: AMN Izd., 1952. 161. Danilov, M. M. Tovaravedenie Prodovol’stvennykh Tovarov: Miaso I Miasnye Tovarye. Moscow: Iz. Ekonomika, 1964. Khrushchev, Nikita. Khrushchev Remembers. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 1970. 178. Long, James. The Book of the Pig. London: Upcott Gill, 1886. 102. Lush, Jay & A.L. Anderson, “A Genetic History of Poland-China Swine: I—Early Breed History: The ‘Hot Blood’ versus the ‘Big Type’” Journal of Heredity 30.4 (1939): 149-56. Martel, Leon. Lend-Lease, Loans, and the Coming of the Cold War: A Study of the Implementation of Foreign Policy. Boulder: Westview Press, 1979. 35. National Archive and Records Administration (NARA). RG 59, General Records of the Department of State. Office of Soviet Union affairs, Box 6. “Records relating to Lend Lease with the USSR 1941-1952”. National Archive and Records Administration (NARA). RG166, Records of the Foreign Agricultural Service. Narrative reports 1940-1954. USSR Cotton-USSR Foreign trade. Box 64, Folder “farm management”. Report written by David V Kelly, 6 Apr. 1951. National Archive and Records Administration (NARA). RG 166, Records of the Foreign Agricultural Service. Narrative Reports 1955-1961. Folder: “Agriculture” “Visits to Soviet agricultural installations,” 15 Nov. 1961. Skeoch, L.A. Food Prices and Ration Scale in the Ukraine, 1946 The Review of Economics and Statistics 35.3 (Aug. 1953), 229-35. State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). Fond R-7021. The Report of Extraordinary Special State Commission on Wartime Losses Resulting from the German-Fascist Occupation cites the following losses in the German takeover. 1948. Stettinus, Edward R. Jr. Lend-Lease: Weapon for Victory. Penguin Books, 1944.

The article is devoted to the issue of regulating the use of natural healing resources in Ukraine, the European Union, and other countries. Natural resources have been found to have many functions, but one of the most important is the ability to use them as a means of preserving or maintaining human health. For this reason, natural healing resources are subject to a special legal regime. Public relations arising from the use and protection of natural healing resources are subjected to legal regulation and devoted to the identification and accounting of natural healing resources, ensuring their rational extraction, use, and protection in order to create favourable conditions for treatment, disease prevention, and recreation. Despite the wide range of healing properties in various natural objects, the environmental legislation of Ukraine contains only a small number of rules on their use. This problem is most fully disclosed in the Water Code of Ukraine, which not only enshrines the procedure for assigning certain water resources to the category of healing but also provides for the adoption of special law statutes and regulations regarding the list of existing water bodies in Ukraine and their inherent healing functions. These regulations highlight the fact that most of the natural healing resources specified in the list belong to the sphere of subsoil use. However, there are no norms in the Subsoil Code of Ukraine that would regulate the use and protection of such objects. Instead, the Subsoil Code of Ukraine contains general rules on basic requirements in the field of subsoil protection, as well as a special article on the protection of subsoil areas of special scientific or cultural value. Healing resources are not mentioned, which is a glaring omission. Situation analysis of the national legal system regarding the use of natural healing resources has shown the need to restructure the legislation, with the primary task of protecting and preserving the healing properties of such sources. For this purpose, the existing practice of public relations among developed European countries, as well as the positive experience in this area, should be taken into account to achieve effective improvement of the legislation system of Ukraine. Studying the issue of prosecution for violation of the rules on the use of natural healing resources or causing damage to them suggests that the national legal system is based on economic interests, without prioritising the preservation of the healing value of such sources. As a result, Ukraine’s policy to preserve the healing properties of natural objects is not characterised by effective methods, significantly reducing the number of such unique and useful resources. The analysis of court cases is evidence that the practice of effective protection and restoration of healing resources is not common. The number of such cases is currently too small when compared with those regarding damages to such natural resources caused by legal entities and individuals.