Gluttony for profit to blame for food scandals
Karim Rushdy says whether in China or the West, food scandals are products of a sick industrial system that seeks profits above all else
Up until two weeks ago, if you asked a viewer of the BBC or CNN to name the first country that comes to mind when they thought about food scandals, "China" would have very likely been the response.
Stories of tainted food products in the world's most populous nation have been seized upon by the Western media. But what most people in the West are not aware of is how much attention these stories garner within China, both in state-run media and through a growing public discourse online. Europeans in particular have been quick to forget mad cow disease, the fundamental cause of which was a cost-driven food supply chain that fed cattle contaminated matter.
Baby formula tainted with melamine and noodles flavoured with ink and paraffin are of course severe breaches of food safety laws that have to be dealt with in the strictest terms. But as the recent horsemeat scandal shows, the West is not immune to food crises.
To cite a weak rule of law or inadequate food safety measures as the underlying cause is to oversimplify a complex issue.
The UN expects the world population to reach around 15 billion by 2100 before beginning to decline. That means a significant increase in food production will be required, which raises difficult questions about the primary role of the food industry, namely, does it exist to feed people the food they need to sustain themselves, or to maximise profits and shareholder value? Are the two mutually exclusive?
Such questions need to be debated at the highest levels if we are to rein in an industry that spends more than US$10 billion annually marketing to children and youth in the US alone.
