399 Cheap Food and Fair Trade [12 Dec 2016]

Last week I discussed examples of food fraud from the 2016 book “Sorting the Beef from the Bull – the Science of Food Fraud Forensics” by Richard Evershed and Nicola Temple. One of the factors leading to food fraud is the modern consumer’s unrealistic (the authors called it “delusional”) expectations of what food should cost.

The average American family spent 43% of their income on food in 1900 but a mere 13% in 2013. Most of this decrease in relative food cost can be attributed to the efficiency of conventional food systems (particularly for packaged processed foods). Consumer demand for the cheapest food puts pressure on the retailers, distributors, processors, and ultimately the producers to cut corners wherever possible, sometimes leading to food fraud. In the book’s Foreword, Prof. Chris Elliott of the U. Belfast reported “…a number of food-business operators have told me their biggest dilemma is to decide if they should cheat in the same way as their competitors, or go out of business.”

This effect of underpaying producers and other food-business workers is more serious in undeveloped (usually tropical or sub-tropical) countries where there are fewer options for work, no unions to negotiate for them, and no social safety nets to feed their families while unemployed. One answer to this problem is the fair trade movement.

Fair Trade can be simply defined as “trade in which fair prices are paid to producers in developing countries”. Production is free of forced labor, child labor, and unsafe working conditions. Crops are raised through sustainable methods. A floor price is established to protect small producers from market fluctuations. Small independent producers may join together to form co-operatives. To prevent fraudulent claims, fair trade certifiers ensure that standards are met and labeling is accurate. Foods commonly produced with free trade include: handicrafts, cotton, coffee, tea, cocoa, chocolate, coconut oil, bananas and flowers.

Learn more about fair trade at fairtrade.ca. And look for the fair trade symbol on items in your grocery store (if you don’t see any ask the manager). Yes these products will cost more. Yet it’s a small price to pay to share a little of the privilege we enjoy in this country with the workers that produce the food we eat.

For more information on this or other natural health topics, stop in and talk to Stan; for medical advice consult your licensed health practitioner.

398 Food Fraud [5 Dec 2016]

I am reading a book called “Sorting the Beef from the Bull – the Science of Food Fraud Forensics” by Richard Evershed and Nicola Temple (April 2016). The problem of food fraud is much larger than I imagined, costing the food industry world-wide billions of dollars each year and sometimes having serious health, social and environmental effects. The sad truth is we don’t always know what we’re eating, and Canada and the natural health industry are not immune to fraud.

The book discusses various types of food fraud that have been documented, often well organized and on a large scale, and the efforts of scientists to uncover them. Here are some examples:
• Olive oil adulterated with commercial canola oil is blamed for 25,000 serious injuries and over 1,000 deaths in Spain (1981)
• Substitution of cheaper species of fish and shellfish
• Honey diluted with high fructose corn syrup or other cheaper sugars
• Manuka honey which sells at a high premium is often counterfeit
• Melamine added to infant formula in China (2008) resulted in 52,000 hospitalizations and 6 infant deaths (two of the men responsible were executed)
• Sick Irish horses slaughtered and mixed with ground beef in the UK (2013)
• Ground nuts added to spices in North America and Europe (2013)
• Mucci Farms of Ontario from 2011-2013 relabelled Mexican bell peppers as “Product of Canada”

To combat this problem, government agencies test foods using sophisticated chemical analyses. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) and the U. of Guelph pioneered the use of DNA analysis to identify species. (Deep budget cuts to CFIA in recent years are undermining this process.)

To be fair, the retailers and even the distributors are often unaware of the adulterations. Processed foods contain dozens of ingredients from many countries and it would be impossible to have them all tested.

One way to reduce the risk of food fraud is to buy local unprocessed foods. Unfortunately “real foods” tend to be more expensive and require more work to prepare at home. But even if the ingredients on processed food labels are accurate, it is still best to avoid them!

For more information on this or other natural health topics, stop in and talk to Stan; for medical advice consult your licensed health practitioner.