In the UK we are, as I write this, going through a food scandal. It has been found that many ready
meals sold in Europe and the UK labelled as beef contained horse meat, in some
cases, 100% horse meat.
To be
totally honest I am not at all surprised.
When it is possible to buy a ready meal for the same price as a cabbage
then there must surely be something amiss somewhere. What this does show though is just how detached
the vast majority of our modern (i.e. Western) civilisation has become from the
environment that it actually depends on for its very existence.
We in
the West don’t need to know where our food came from, where or who made our
clothes, or who was it that picked those tomatoes in Senegal that are on our
supermarket shelves, or if those Jordan River dates were grown on seized land
or not. We can ignore everything about
food, our homes, our clothes, or our transport as long as we have the money to
pay for it. Most do just that of course,
simply ignore what is in front of them by the use of their wallet or purse, but
there is always a price to be paid sooner or later by this ignorance, deliberate
or not.
The
last 60 or so years have seen the depletion of Earth’s resources on a massive
scale. Fossil fuel is diminishing and the
world has passed Peak Oil. The climate
is warming causing instability in the world’s weather with “every 100 years” floods,
droughts and tornado’s now being regular, often year-on-year events as
ecosystems fail. Deliberate blindness
and amnesia does not make a problem, any problem go away. The fact is that, cheap (horse) meat or not,
our present lifestyle is not one that can be afforded.
What
is ignored is the fact that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the
environment, or what is
usually termed as the world’s ‘natural resources’.
The Western Culture takes in its stride the exploitation and abuse of people in other countries, whatever their age, that lack safe working conditions, honest working hours, a proper roof over their head, running water, and decent food. Everything is reduced to the bottom line, to a financial or political advantage.
The Western Culture takes in its stride the exploitation and abuse of people in other countries, whatever their age, that lack safe working conditions, honest working hours, a proper roof over their head, running water, and decent food. Everything is reduced to the bottom line, to a financial or political advantage.
The
total and utter obscenity is that hungry people in arid lands work for a
pittance so we can eat cheap food that exports with it their water. (1) and (1a)
That
badly clothed and badly treated people work so we can wear good clothes. (2)
That
people that try to protect the oppressed whose lands are being ‘acquired’ by
governments and businesses are victims of death squads. (3)
Our
modern Western food systems tell of abundance.
Groaning supermarket shelves surely can’t lie... or can they? Actually they can, and do. We have manufactured over the last sixty or
so years an illusion that cannot be sustained for much longer.
There
are droughts in the grain areas of the US (4)
There
are droughts in the grain areas of Russia (5)
There
are droughts in Australia (6)
There
is a seemingly unnoticed farming crisis in the UK (7)
While
the above takes place the message is that ‘we’ need to double food production
by 2050 to feed a growing population, while even now we waste enough food to do
just that. What has been created is simply a mirage. A
mirage looks real from a distance but as the inevitable happens, time passes and one gets
closer to it, it fades. What is needed
is to recognise the mirage of seeming abundance of cheap food while the chance to do so is still
available to us.
Posts
2 comments:
Thank you for well researched post, though not easy reading over my morning coffee.
I clicked and read the link about the children making bangles. Many of the comments focused on the failings of the Indian government to enforce safe working practices and child labour rules, which I totally agree with, but also the responsibility must surely be shared a little by all of us. If we buy cheap bangles then some-one somewhere has to produce them cheaply.
When did we become so uncaring about the effects of our actions on others? My hope is that change can come not only by better policing of laws designed to protect vulnerable people but also by each one of us making mindful decisions about what we buy and how much stuff we actually need.
Thank you again for the post, we need to be reminded of these issues.
As always Peter, an informative post that does not fail to remind me that we all need to be making steps, no matter how small...
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