Why Food Security ?

For several decades our Agriculture policies and by extension, Canadian Trade Policy, have been heavily influenced by economic concept of 'comparative advantage'. This IS the basic premise for the old GATT(General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) and the current life form of this agreement, the WTO.

Is this a sustainable model for agriculture and for Canada? I have never believed this model, which supports the 'least cost' theory, was a direction for ANY country to take.
Factor in the recent "China" mess with the pet food disaster and you have a recipe for disaster!

For consumers who are just beginning to see what type of hydra has been developed in the food industry, the following article is just the tip of the iceberg:



Tainted-food exports a global worry

Pet deaths focus fresh scrutiny on China's chronic food safety woes
Apr 13, 2007 04:30 AM, Christopher Bodeen, Associated Press

SHANGHAI - The list of Chinese food exports rejected at American ports reads like a chef's nightmare: pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella. Yet, it took a much more obscure item, contaminated wheat gluten, to focus public attention on a very real and frightening fact: China's chronic food safety woes are now an international concern.

In recent weeks, scores of cats and dogs have died of kidney failure blamed on eating pet food containing gluten from China that was tainted with melamine, a chemical used in plastics, fertilizers and flame retardants. While humans aren't believed at risk, the incident has sharpened concerns over China's food exports and the limited ability of U.S. inspectors to catch problem shipments.

"This really shows the risks of food purity problems combining with international trade," said Michiel Keyzer of the Centre for World Food Studies at Amsterdam's Vrije Universiteit. Just as with manufactured goods, exports of meat, produce, and processed foods from China have soared .

Chinese agricultural exports to Canada and the United States surged nearly 20-fold over the past 25 years, to $2.26 billion (U.S.) last year, prompting outcries from foreign farm sectors feeling pinched by low Chinese prices.

Worried about losing access to foreign markets and stung by tainted-food products scandals at home, China has in recent years tried to improve inspections, with limited success. The problems the government faces are legion. Pesticides and chemical fertilizers are used in excess to boost yields while harmful antibiotics are widely administered to control disease in seafood and livestock. Rampant industrial pollution risks introducing heavy metals into the food chain.

Farmers have used cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red to boost the value of their eggs and fed an asthma medication to pigs to produce leaner meat. Shoddy infant formula with little nutritional value has been blamed for causing severe malnutrition in hundreds of babies and killing at least 12.

With China increasingly intertwined in global trade, Chinese exporters are paying a price for unsafe practices. Excessive antibiotic or pesticide residues have caused bans in Europe and Japan on Chinese shrimp, honey and other products. Hong Kong blocked imports of turbot last year after inspectors found traces of malachite green, a possibly cancer-causing chemical used to treat fungal infections.

One source of the problem is China's fractured farming sector, comprised of small landholdings that make regulation difficult, experts said.

Small farms ship to market with little documentation. Testing of the safety and purity of farm products such as milk is often haphazard, hampered by fuzzy lines of authority among regulators. Only about 6 per cent of agricultural products were considered pollution-free in 2005, while better quality food officially stamped as "green" accounts for just 1 per cent of the total, according to U.S. figures.

For foreign importers, the answer is to know your suppliers and test thoroughly, industry experts said. Only a tiny percentage of the millions of shipments entering the U.S. each year are inspected, yet shipments from China were rejected at a rate of 200 per month this year, the largest from any country. "You just have to hope your system is strong enough and your producers are careful enough," said Todd Meyer, China director for the U.S. Grains Council.

To protect its foreign markets, China is trying to set up a dedicated export supply chain, sealed off from the domestic market, said Keyzer. Systems for tracing vegetables have been set up, although doing so for meat products is harder.
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Food Safety Anyone?

The latest issue on food safety to hit the airwaves, was ironically NOT about food for humans but food for pets. Many of you have been following or at least are aware of the deaths, recalls, lawsuits et al, that have been the inevitable results. Finding the contaminant took weeks, recalls impacted at least two major companies, who sourced their 'wheat gluten' form the same importer/distributor.

The issue of the melamine contaminant is not so important in the short term as the country the product originated from. As consumers of food, this should give us pause. The product could have just as easily been sourced for human consumption. On this occasion at least, family pets have become societies' 'canaries in the mines'.

Proponents of the 'least cost' theory of economics failed to take issues like food safety equivalence into account. This doesn't surprise me at all. Most economists live in a theoretical world, where a number of 'assumptions are just part of the 'equation'. Governments tell us they have examined food safety standards of other countries and found a way to determine comparable standards, in order to let trade proceed and traders to profit. This is supposed to comfort us all because then Canada profits and in the trickle down theory of economics...we all will eventually profit....somehow. "Trust us!", is the implied message.

I imagine this week's feature article in MacLeans will give people food for thought. It might even give those of you in agriculture pause. I knew many manufacturers of no name brand products often were the same ones who supplied the high end stuff in the stores. But I was blown away by the thought that even a companies' whole line wold be outsourced to the big boys as is done by Iaams. Menu Foods was producing their entire line until the recent debacle hit the airwaves.

The MacLeans article goes in depth and into the history of Menu as it pursued the lowest cost supplier of a component of its products. It outlines its products and the companies it supplied. The impact was huge.

This IS just the tip of the iceberg in our modern food distribution system. Like an iceberg 3/4 of it lies hidden and secret, waiting to do irreparable harm. The miserable labels on our products fail us daily as we try to figure out just what IS in our foods.

I am certain the pace of damage, as well as the scale, will simply get larger. No one is suggesting fundamental changes to our food systems and that is exactly what we really need. Consumers may have something to say about that.-CG

Is This The Beginning?

I am always, always, blown away by our species' arrogance. Man has always been driven to mold his environment. And we just have not been able to resist a variety of initiatives, that have stirred our curiosity and made life easier perhaps, but certainly not simpler!

What if our civilization is struck down, by something we are not able to solve? Has anyone really thought about the implications of this new concern that has been in the papers a lot lately. I am referring to Colony Collapse Disorder.

About a month ago this issue began to hit the press, as the American States began to notice a problem with their bees. It has since seemed to spread to other countries. A variety of potential causes have been suggested and our provincial Ministry of Agriculture has even partnered with the University of Guelph to see if they can come up with any answers. If we are really lucky, someone might. What if we are not lucky? Have any of us really thought about the repercussions?

Do think about it, long and hard.-CG

From to-days news:

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.
They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously home loving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast. CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr. George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

The case against handsets:

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.
Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset. Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.

Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting. Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.

Food Miles?!

This week's MacLeans has an article in it that surprised me. "It's All About those peas from China", i s full of interesting and to some degree, slightly shocking material about the frozen produce we consume on a regular basis all winter. As the major shopper in the household, I have been more and more depressed about the surprises I have had at my local grocery stores. From my perspective, they haven't been pleasant ones.

For years, I have been able to buy frozen vegetables, with relative confidence. As an Ontario resident, it was important to me to have that locally grown produce in the cold of the winter. Somehow, the latest practices of our retailers and food processors, slipped under my guard, while life happened.

I guess I shouldn't have been so surprised, manufacturers of everything else are 'outsourcing ' in droves.

This brings me to the concept of the Food Miles, also mentioned in the article. I think it is a idea the public needs to hear more about. I believe they want to but 'local' and Canadian, but no one, not farmers, governments and certainly not processors, are making it easy. What foolishness, to import products like frozen vegetables, milk powders or whatever, that can be grown here. The cost in terms of 'food miles' and the environment, is enormous and wasteful, not to mention the financial devastation seen in agriculture.

Now add in the incredible disaster facing pet food companies who 'sourced' a product like wheat gluten, incidentally, from China and got way more than they ever expected! This stuff could easily have been for human consumption. See what some believe is the root cause.

It would seem to me, that smart agriculture groups, should be having a good hard look at harnessing the enormous power of the public. Standards like the ones proposed nationally for cheese and have processors screaming, should be important to consumers, if they knew about it!

Considering the continuing food fiasco's from offshore, I certainly have no confidence in ideas like 'comparative' or 'similar' standards, forced on an unsuspecting public, by our governments, businesses and the WTO.

With the environment and global warming hitting the levels it currently is, perhaps Food Miles, are an idea whose time is come.-CG