Music by The Refusers

Friday, May 6, 2011

Food Safety For Whom? Corporate Wealth Versus People's Health

And it looks like we are losing our health in the process.  Below is an explanation of a Grain breifing along with an introduction to this particular briefing and the link to the entire article:

GRAIN produces several briefings each year. They are substantial research reports, providing indepth background information and analysis on a given topic. GRAIN briefings are usually written by GRAIN staff, often in collaboration with other organisations or individuals.

Corporate Wealth versus People's Health: "Food Safety" Used to Increase Corporate Control over Food and Agriculture

School children in the US were served 200,000 kilos of meat contaminated with a deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria before the nation's second largest meat packer issued a recall in 2009.  A year earlier, six babies died and 300,000 others got horribly sick with kidney problems in China when one of the country's top dairy producers knowingly allowed an industrial chemical into its milk supply.

Across the world, people are getting sick and dying from food like never before. Governments and corporations are responding with all kinds of rules and regulations, but few have anything to do with public health. The trade agreements, laws and private standards used to impose their version of "food safety" only entrench corporate food systems that make us sick and devastate those that truly feed and care for people, those based on biodiversity, traditional knowledge, and local markets.

People are resisting, whether its movements against GMOs in Benin and "mad cow" beef in Korea or campaigns to defend street hawkers in India and raw milk in Colombia. The question of who defines "food safety" is increasingly central to the struggle over the future of food and agriculture.

To read the complete breifing, please click on the link provided:

http://www.grain.org/briefings/?id=222

No comments: