[pf] Fw: F&M crisis and modern supermarkets (Monbiot/Guardian)

· #2 of 2. {See #1 for why I'm posting these two.)   D.

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At 23:54 2/3/2001 +1300, David Parker sent to: GreenViews NZ, with Subject:
[GV]Fwd: F&M crisis and modern supermarkets (Monbiot/Guardian) :-

Foot and Mouth Disease: Sins of the Superstores Visited on Us.

It is big profits (not 'cheap' food) to blame for the latest farming crisis.

by George Monbiot
Published on Thursday, March 1, 2001 in the Guardian of London

"You enterprised a railroad through the valley," John Ruskin charged the
railway companies in 1889. "The valley is gone, and the gods with it; and
now every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half-an-hour, and every fool
in Bakewell at Buxton." God knows what he would have made of the
21st-century livestock trade.

Today, every sheep in Northumberland can be at Devon in half a day, and
every sheep in Devon at Northumberland. And, as the government discovered
to its astonishment this week, their diseases travel with them. Why is this
happening? Almost everyone, radical commentators included, agrees that it's
because the public wants "cheap food". They're wrong.

There's no doubt that the modern food economy encourages long-distance
transport. Between 1965 and 1998, the international trade in food tripled,
to 600m metric tonnes. In Britain, the transport of milk has increased
30-fold since 1980. To meet the demands of the global economy, livestock
hauliers routinely break the rules requiring them to rest, feed and water
the animals they are transporting, in some cases all the way from Britain
to Beirut.

But of one thing we can be sure: none of this has anything to do with the
needs of consumers. This myth can be dismissed by means of a complex
research procedure called going shopping. In my home town, independent
butchers selling local meat charge some 30% less than the superstores. Even
the organic lamb on sale in the farmers' market marginally undercuts the
poisoned produce the big chains sell.

Yet the superstores, as they often boast, are far more efficient than small
shops. [note from David Mac: Walmart recently arrived in Britain, and I
believe at least one of the three biggest grocery supermarkets is now owned
by a (bigger) US corporation.] They exert an iron grip on their suppliers,
they employ just one-fifth of the staff per unit of turnover, they enjoy,
in most places, lower business rates. Consumers have not benefited from
these economies. The current epidemic of foot and mouth is the result of
structural market changes introduced solely to safeguard the profits of the
superstores.

They buy, for example, only from the biggest farmers, employing the fewest
staff. This means that more animals are crammed together, with fewer people
to check their state of health. They lobby to ensure that the burden of
regulation falls not on them and their suppliers, but on small business.
This is one of the reasons why so many local abattoirs have collapsed in
Britain, forcing farmers to send their animals ever further afield.

Ironically, the food poisoning which helped justify the tighter inspection
regime is mostly the result of the large-scale agro-industry the
supermarkets have encouraged: the sins of the giants are visited upon the
dwarves.

They have lobbied, too, to be allowed to cheat their customers by changing
the rules on provenance. "Scotch beef" and "Welsh lamb" now come from
animals pastured in Scotland or Wales for just two weeks. They are trucked
all over the United Kingdom so that the stores can change their designation
and thus raise the price of their meat. This is not about cheap food. It's
about expensive food.

But, most importantly, by trading directly with the big producers they
control, the big chains have cut out the middleman. The result is that
livestock markets have disappeared as swiftly as the slaughterhouses. Now,
in order to sell their animals to independent butchers, farmers in some
parts of the country must drive them hundreds of miles. The superstores
themselves have centralised their distribution networks, trucking livestock
from Land's End to John O'Groats and the butchered meat back to Land's End.

Their profits are extracted only at enormous cost to ourselves. The
billions they make are matched by the billions the taxpayer spends on road
building and maintenance, environmental remediation, hospital bills for the
victims of food poisoning and, of course, mass slaughter programmes.

The animals pay too, by means of the appalling conditions in which they are
reared and trucked. Yet the savings the supermarkets make are not passed on
to farmers, and they are not passed on to consumers.

The power of the superstores ensures that others must be blamed for the
disasters they precipitate. The farmers being investigated in
Northumberland may well have neglected their animals, but since the big
chains started buying their pork from gigantic industrial batteries, the
farm-gate price has collapsed, forcing the remaining producers to spend
ever less time and money on their pigs. Badgers are blamed for bovine TB,
while the mass transit of infectious cattle is overlooked. And the
underlying problem, we are universally informed, is us.

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sent on by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.geocities.com/davdd.geo/index.html#top
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