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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