Stop them poisoning us!
The government's decision to establish a Food Standards Agency has been widely welcomed, even before its remit has been revealed; scarcely a day goes by without another scandal or scare about food. But it will have to do more than police butchers and take-aways if it is to ensure that our food is fit to eat.
Under a profit-based system of food production and distribution, considerations of safety, nutrition and palatability take second place to the balance sheet.
The FSA is likely to take responsibility for hygiene at point of sale. This has been the source of many of the cases of food poisoning in recent years.
The e-coli epidemic in Scotland last year, in which over 20 people died, resulted from careless handling of meat. Nor are vegetarians necessarily safe; a similar epidemic in Japan was apparently spread by infected radish sprouts.
Cases of e-coli, salmonella and campylobacter poisoning have increased by hundreds of percent over the past 15 years, while overall food poisoning in England and Wales has more than quadrupled over the same period.
This has happened at a time when local government budgets have been slashed and 'red tape' repealed, leading to a drop in the size and authority of trading standards departments. At the same time, changing life styles have led to less home cooking, and more eating out, take-aways and microwave use, all of which increase the chance of bacteria multiplying.
The FSA will probably oversee abattoirs, whose appalling state is a further casualty of deregulation. 845 of the total of 919 have been officially found to fall far below acceptable standards of hygiene. In addition to bacteria, this is believed to have contributed to the spread of BSE from cattle to humans.
Despite hygiene regulations insisting on the complete separation of brain and other suspect offal from the meat, reports regularly refer to the contamination of carcasses by such offal. Although many scientists believe that such contamination, following on from the feeding of dead sheep to naturally herbivorous cattle, is the source of human BSE, others, noting the similarity between the symptoms of BSE and of Gulf War syndrome, have pointed the finger at overuse of organophosphates in modern agriculture.
The widespread use of fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides has meant that countless chemicals have been introduced to our food. As yet, little official research has been carried out into the possible cumulative effects of these. However, many researchers believe that they are implicated in the mushrooming of environmental diseases, such as asthma, as well as in disorders of the immune system and other 'new' diseases such as AIDS and ME.
These chemicals, which are supposed to control weeds and parasites, and to improve yield, in fact produce crops which require more and more chemical treatment, while breeding chemical-resistant weeds and parasites.
The much-vaunted 'green revolution' of the 1960s and 70s, which was supposedly going to eliminate famine in Third World countries, in fact increased hunger and poverty. It tied these economies ever more closely into western patterns and control, and depleted the quality of the soil. Since only the wealthier peasants could afford the non-indigenous crops and the necessary chemicals, this process also accelerated the immiseration of millions of poorer peasants, while increasing the profits of the chemical industry.
Another issue that the FSA is unlikely to look at is the massive use of antibiotics and hormones in farming. It is increasingly clear that antibiotic residues in meat and dairy produce are encouraging the development of resistant strains of disease.
More virulent forms of, for instance, tuberculosis, resistant to almost all current antibiotics, threaten new epidemics, sweeping through populations left with little means to combat them. Cattle are also treated with hormones in order to boost milk production; these hormones, which enter the human food chain, have been known to disrupt human hormone systems.
These artificial additions to the food chain are not made in order to improve the quality or nutritive value of the food, nor even to produce a higher yield. Despite all the myths, there is not a world shortage of food; the central inequality is of distribution.
The most graphic and obscene example of this is the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, which pays farmers to 'set aside' land, ie not to produce food, in order to reduce the so-called 'butter mountain', 'wine lake' and other bizarre features. Meanwhile, western economies import vast amounts of grain from third world countries in order to produce meat - effectively forcing some states to rely on exporting cash crops rather than producing for local consumption. This claim was one of the many allegations against MacDonald's upheld in the recent 'MacLibel' trial.
This is also the reality behind genetic engineering. The main purpose of the current gene transfer proposals is to develop crops which can absorb ever higher quantities of herbicide without themselves being killed. Multinational chemical companies, such as Monsanto, will provide genetically modified seed to farmers who will be obliged to dose the crops with weedkillers from the same companies.
Farmers will not be permitted to take seed from one year's crop to grow the next year, but will have to buy more from the company. Thus, as with the 'green revolution', farmers will be forced into reliance on the chemical industry. Poorer farmers will go bankrupt, and the industrialisation of agriculture will increase - to the detriment of nutrition and health.
Although it is true that human intervention over millennia has selected and modified crops and animals, such genetic modification poses several major health hazards. It could lead to the creation of new toxins and allergens. It could further mean the development of herbicide-resistant weeds, the spread of diseases from one species to another, the loss of bio-diversity, and many other dangers.
However, it will not be compulsory to identify genetically modified foodstuffs . Not only will this prevent individuals choosing to avoid the products it will also preventing scientists and doctors proving any negative effects.
A survey by the Consumers Association established that over 90 per cent of consumers want genetically modified foodstuffs to be clearly labelled. But such labelling, giving consumers choice, would hit profits.
The MacLibel trial last year showed the extent to which food companies can determine our diet, to the detriment of nutrition, third world economies, and their own workers. Workers in fast food chains suffer some of the worst working conditions; cases have been recorded of trainees receiving far less than £1 per hour.
Booker McConnell has been accused of turning huge areas in South America from productive arable land into vast cattle ranches. For many years, activists have boycotted Nestlé products, since the company has been one of the worst offenders against the World Health Organisation's International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes. These practices are inevitable in a capitalist economy, based on profit rather than nutrition or need.
Unfortunately, many on the left have failed to take up these issues unless they directly affect workers' rights, such as in the dispute at JJ Foods in 1996. But questions of taste and nutritional value, third world exploitation and the perversion of science for multinational profit, are vital issues for the working class.
Agribusiness is denaturing our food, poisoning us, starving millions, and making us pay handsomely for the privilege. These are the issues that the FSA will not be addressing. While we can and must join with environmentalists, even with churches and liberals, in campaigning around some of these issues, we must not lose sight of the central point: only through the fight for a socialist society will we be able to create a system for the production, distribution and preparation based on need rather than on profit.