"Let them eat shit!"
THE REVELATION that manufacturers of animal feed in France have used waste including sludge from septic tanks and effluent from animal carcasses to bulk up their product is just the latest evidence that the drive for profit is incompatible with public health and safety.
The scandal was recently uncovered by German television, which pointed out that the revolting sewage residues were being added to feed for pigs and chickens.
It follows on the massive scare over the level of highly toxic dioxins in animal feed in Belgium, which has led to an international ban on Belgian meat and dairy products.
Some countries have already banned all European farm produce, and others are now likely to follow suit.
Far from making the "polluter pay", the cost of each scandal is carried by governments, while the prime culprits – grasping farmers and feed industry firms escape scot-free, and the filthy abattoirs pick up increased subsidies for slaughtering infected livestock.
Taxpayers in Belgium are to foot the bill for a $160m handout to farmers whose produce has been destroyed, and as much as $660m more is likely to be paid out in further subsidies over the next seven years to Belgian producers of polluted food.
It turns out that the Belgian authorities knew at least six months ago that animal feed was being contaminated with dioxin, but tried to keep it quiet.
In Britain the cost of compensation payments arising from the BSE scandal, arising from feeding cattle with material adulterated with the ground up brains o sheep, runs into billions.
The BSE scandal was worst in Britain because of the deregulation of the feed industry by the Thatcher government – eagerly exploited by grasping feed manufacturers eager to pocket an extra profit – and by the lack of any real controls over the quality of food on the market.
The development of genetically modified corn, tomatoes, soya and other vegetables, and the massive use by farmers of suspect weedkillers, insecticides and fertilisers means there is little refuge even for vegetarians from the systematic poisoners of agribusiness.
We can see from the cynical attitude of the rail operators, whose priority is not safety but forcing train guards to clip tickets and sell teas, that human life weighs light – if at all – in the scales compared with the profits of major corporations.
While Blair and his ilk prate about "partnership" with big business, these vivid examples remind us that the interests of working people and the profiteers are completely counterposed.
British and other Western capitalists don’t care if workers in the Third World eat at all – as long as they keep providing cheap labour and raw materials, and their governments keep paying interest on ancient loans.
And as they tuck in to banquets of the finest foods available, bosses have no reason to worry about the quality of food ordinary people find in supermarkets – as long as they keep buying and boosting the profits of Tesco, Sainsbury’s and the food manufacturers.
A Labour government worth the name would be working with experts and the trade union movement to set up a full-scale and independent inquiry into the pollution of the food chain.
All the firms and farms found to be in breach of basic standards should not be subsidised, but nationalised, without compensation, and run under workers’ control and expert scrutiny.