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Visitors since November 16, 1999:
European Union Control System does not assure safe food
L.s.On Thursday, 21 October 1999, I attended a conference : "La securit alimentaire". The speakers and their "subjects" were :
Monsieur Alfred Noirfalise
Professeur de Bromatologie-Toxicologie, Universit de Lige
Prsident de la section Alimentation - Nutrition au Conseil Suprieur d'Hygine.
"Etat de la question"
Docteur Henry Belveze
Chef d'Unit? adjoint - Relations internationales - DG XXIV Sant et Protection des Consommateurs, Communaut Europenne
"La protection du consommateur au niveau europen"
Monsieur J. Hallaert
Directeur du dpartement de la politique alimentaire - Fedraton de l'industrie alimentaire (FEVIA)
"La position de l'industrie agro-alimentaire"
Monsieur Robert Remy
Association de consommateurs Test Achats
"La position des consommateurs"
The debate was animated by Monsieur Nicolas Guggenbuhl, Professeur de Nutrition l'Institut Paul Lambin - journaliste scientifique.
The conference was organised by the students of the faculty of pharmacy of the ULB, to get some funds to pay for a study tour at the end of their year. The professor who will participate in the trip, gave them some help.
Analysis of presentations
The system of controls in Europe made by the scientific world, the european government and the food industry does not assure safe food, Monsieur Noirfalise showed. The result is still : "trying to prevent the latest crisis", at an accelerating rate. Germany was recently able to stop pollution by dioxin in milk, just before it became a crisis. They were not able to prevent it. The goal was to create a system that would assure safe food for everyone by the year 2000. Something was missing to achieve this goal, Monsieur Noirfalise told. He expressed his faith to find it by the year 2000. All speakers stressed the need to inform, to educate, nay, to imply the consumer in a process to assure good food. A latest effort of the food industry is to use lists with positive specifications which food products should satisfy, Monsieur Hallaert showed.
Reaction to presentations
One of the positive specifications, the food industry proposes to use, which food products should satisfy, could be : food should be produced through processes that assure income for eternity. This definition of ecological food implies lists of specifications about the resources used and the means of transformation applied throughout the production processes, for each product, from its cradle to its grave, in the least of details.
Such a "cahier des charges" for an ecological industry, could be written by experts. A "cahier des charges" of an ecological industry could be written by producers only. They have to apply and satisfy specifications of experts in the concepts, construction and operations of the tools, techniques and means with which they produce their products. While doing so, they could see other ways and means to improve the ecological quality of their products. Producers would search for ways and means to improve the ecological quality of their products, if consumers could deduct, from their taxable income, the money they had spent on ecological products.
It is reasonable to assume that, under these conditions, most of the consumers, who pay taxes over their income, would demand and search for ecological products. They would be driven by financial and personal interests to maintain the integrity of human nature, with their income. Their demand would create the force that would pull producers away from the limits implied in each control. This force would prevent other crises. Production would not be done anymore close to the crisis limits of pollution. The demand of consumers would make producers compete with each other to improve the ecological quality of their products. The demand of consumers for good food assures good food, when consumers account for their costs of living in a public accounting of "stewards or trustees of human nature".
The inability of the European Union to assure safe food with its control system demonstrates the logic that no assurance can be given about a quality or state by controlling respect for or adherence to minimum standards. Only continuous control to sustain an achieved quality or state and continuous research to improve a quality or state can assure a quality or state. Such control and research is the work of managers. This inability to assure safe food makes the introduction of the management of the costs of living even more urgent. If the European Union cannot assure safe food, which country, state or nation could?
According to a November 1, 1999 ENS e-mail, "U.S. companies will soon have to publicly disclose the release of even small amounts of persistant, long lasting toxins into the air or water. President Bill Clinton announced Saturday that the U.S. will tighten reporting rules on toxins like dioxin, which can accumulate in the environment so that even small releases can lead to serious health and environmental problems." Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 1999
SACRAMENTO, California, November 24, 1999 (ENS) - American farmers are preading fertilizers containing toxic waste on farm fields and home gardens, California state and independent tests have found. Even though these products may exceed federal standards defining hazardous waste, the State of California is proposing new rules that would legalize the current practice of allowing these toxics to be mixed into fertilizers according to Dr. Bill Liebhart, a soil scientist in the Agronomy and Range Science Department at the University of California at Davis, who is also a veteran of the fertilizer industry. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 1999
The danger of trying to assure safe food by imposing limits to pollution is also the danger implied in the assessment of the risks accompanying this pollution. This danger is described in a paragraph of the article : "Ethical Hazards of Risk Assessment" by Peter Montague :
"But risk assessment is now embedded in our environmental laws at the federal and state levels in a way that guarantees that the "rights" of industrial poisoners will be protected by the apparatus of the state while citizens will be first disempowered and then physically harmed by the risk assessors' work. Risk assessors are now in the position of the conductors and engineers who kept the trains running on time to the death camps in Nazi Germany to minimize discomfort to their passengers --they are just doing a job, honorably and to the best of their ability, but the final result of every professional risk assessor's work is the destruction of the natural environment, one decision at a time, and the relentless spread of sickness throughout the human and wildlife populations." The complete article is presented at the ZERO web site.
What could further happen when production continues close to the crisis limits of pollution? Because of the increasing sophistication and refinement of pollutants in their effects on genes and cells, any pollution beyond the crisis limit could wipe out the population in particular sections of a town, over a period that might shorten in time. These pollutants could also blind this population or deform them either mentally or physically otherwise, over the same period. Such pollution could be turned into leaks and become arms in fights between gangs, cartels or groups formed by different criteria than the previous two. "La guerre des boutons" serait devenue la guerre des ordures.
There does not seem to be another theory, to pull producers away from the officially accepted levels of pollution and to assure safe food, according to the words of Klaus Tpfer, executive director of the UN Environment Programme and formerly Germany's Environment Minister.
In the "Newsweek" of September 27, 1999, an interview with Mr. Tpfer is presented on the last page, 76. He describes the ecological crisis as worsening globally. He ends his description with : "Postponing action is no longer an option". His answer to the question : "What kind of action is needed?" is : "We need much more comprehensive, integrated policymaking." "International Institutions, governments, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, the scientific community - they must learn to work more closely."
These are the words of someone who does not know a solution to a problem. When a solution is known, policies are applied in practises, such as the management of the costs of living. All these organisations then automatically work closely to apply the solution globally, out of necessity. Mr. Tpfer does not seem to work closely enough with others to know the theory that offers a solution.
In "Le Monde" of the week-end of 6 and 7 November, 1999 an article indicates that experiments in the European Union supported by the European Commission demonstrate that harvests deminish with 80 grammes per square meter, every time the number of diverse specimen is divided by two. The management of the costs of living would enhance biodiversity because every difference among produce could have a commercial value in maintaining the integrity of human nature. This consequence is further explained at the ZERO web site.
WASHINGTON, DC, November 12, 1999 (ENS) - Renewable energy and energy efficiency are the common elements in four new projects approved in October by the U.S. Initiative on Joint Implementation. This agency works internationally to encourage the broader use of energy efficiency, new technologies, and sustainable development with the goal of reducing greenhouse gas production and preventing global warming. Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 1999
Without a demand for products produced with these new technologies, the encouragement will lack for producers to apply these ecological technologies. - This was demonstrated in the case of "Van Leer's Vatenfabriek", in Amstelveen, the Netherlands. They had bought an invention to make plastics biodegradable to a certain degree. They could not sell the plastic made with it, because no utiliser wanted to pay the higher price to recover the investment made in the invention and to recover the costs to search for and to develop the tools and techniques to produce this biodegradable plastic. - Producers have no interests to apply ecological technologies or to search for them, as long as they cannot pass the costs of research and development on to the consumer. A sustained demand from consumers managing their costs of living will raise the interest of producers to apply and to search for ecological technologies. The first ones to offer products made with these new technologies would be able to conquer a large part of the market of these consumers.
The capacity to deduct costs from taxable income makes the consumer able to assume, with his and her income, responsibility for the integrity of human nature of this and following generations. Consumers would share this accounting capacity with producers. The socio-economic power would be shared among the social power of income of producers, Yang and the economic power of expense of consumers, Yin.
I asked the speakers at the conference "La securit alimentaire" for their support of the "Bahia project".
Would you be good to express your support for the "Bahia project" ? You can get to it at the ZERO web site : http://freezone.exmachina.net/ZERO, via the table of contents of the English text. "An ecological version of the free market economy" presents the essentials of the management of the costs of living.
Brussels, November 25, 1999 Willem Adrianus de Bruijn