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IN the recent past, the rich and powerful agribusiness interests in France and Britain have both been guilty of boosting profits by bulking animal feed with disgusting things like other dead animals, sewage and slurry, In Britain this is believed to have led to the 1980's outbreak of mad cow disease and in France the practice was banned because it was feared it could cause diseases in humans.
Now, these giant food producing interests are trying to exploit consumers' fears -- which their filthy practices caused in the first place -- to introduce a measure of trade protectionism. In the case of France this is backed by the French government and has taken the form of maintaining the ban on British beef despite the decision of the European Union to lift that ban.
In Britain, the government is wary of crossing the line towards an Angle-French trade war. But the big food industry interests are nonetheless doing their best to'whip up an unofficial boycott of all things French -- along with a good measure of xenophobia.
Underlying all of this is a fall in livestock prices and intensifying competition for market share.
The desperate methods used to squeeze higher profits from animal production and the difficulties over trade are both problems arising from the capitalist crisis of over-production and the indifference of capitalist enterprise to anything other than profit making. People's health, animal welfare, a safe environment and food quality are seen as losses on the balance sheet and are only attended to in accordance with government regulation.
There is nothing new in all of this. Regulations on food safety had to be introduced to stop the "enterprising" business people of yesteryear from bulking up bread and other foodstuffs with various inedible and harmful fillers ranging from chalk to arsenic.
It's interesting to note that while apologists for capitalism claim the system of market forces and competition tends towards lowering prices, this doesn't seem to have happened at all where food is concerned. Small-scale kill farmers and consumers are clearly the losers in all of this.
In recent weeks there have been public protests by small farmers complaining that sheep were only fetching about a quid each. But did consumers notice any change in the shops? No, nothing at all -- a leg of lamb is still too dear for most families to buy and just a couple of chops still costs the shopper more than the farmer gets for the whole carcass.
It shows that the tendency under capitalism towards monopolisation and the creation of giant firms capable of dominating the market-place leads to less, not more, consumer choice.
Food products, which everyone has to buy in order to live, remain high priced regardless oflow prices at the farm gate. Of course if farm gate prices were to suddenly rise we can be certain the shopper would notice the change to higher shop prices very quickly.
Workers in agriculture, food processing and retailing are also on the sharp end of this crisis. Farm workers' wages are among the lowest in the country and the working conditions of casual farm workers employed by sub-contractors are notoriously dismal.
Similarly, while the profits of the giant supermarkets continue to rise, the wages and conditions of those stuck behind the tills hour upon hour remain poor.
There is no doubt that people should be angry. But the enemy is not the French people or even the French farmers -- it is the powerful barons of the giant agribusinesses, in Britain, the rest of Europe and the United States, and above all the capitalist system itself -- it is capitalism that needs to be banned!