There are many reasons why people not directly affected by food insecurity should consider it a problem, even taking moral considerations about social justice out of the equation.

The most eye-catching is that in creating desperate people, hunger becomes a source of conflict and a threat to everyone’s security.

“One of the arguments is terrorism and national security. When you have people living in poverty and hunger, that’s a breeding ground for terrorism,” David Dawe, senior economist at the Rome-based United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) tells IPS. “That’s a strong argument.”

Josette Sheeran, head of the World Food Programme (WFP), another U.N. food agency based in Rome, also believes that empty stomachs feed trouble.

“A hungry world is a dangerous world,” Sheeran told reporters earlier this year. “Without food, people have only three options: they riot, they emigrate, or they die. None of these are acceptable.”

While these may indeed be “strong arguments” for powerful states to take action, their implications set some NGOs engaged in the war on hunger on edge. Some reject them outright.

“I don’t buy this argument that if we don’t do the right thing they’ll come over here and ruin our lives,” John Hilary, executive director of the London-based anti-poverty group War on Want tells IPS. “I think that’s too near to the far right and the British National Party.”

Oxfam International believes the self-interest case is valid, while harbouring concerns that it could be twisted by groups in developed countries to block immigration and imports from developing countries.

“It is true that it is in the developed world’s interest to eradicate hunger, but I also perceive some risks in this message,” Teresa Cavero, head of research at Oxfam’s Spanish section tells IPS.

“With the economic crisis and the temptation for greater protectionism, it could be a double-edged sword. For example, it could be said that by encouraging growth in developing countries, people will have more job opportunities in their homelands and there will be less migration. This may be correct in part, but it does not mean immigration is a bad thing.”

It is also true, however, that decades of taking the developed world to task over the need to eradicate hunger as part of a quest for social justice has not been enormously successful.

It could be argued that the developed world will only find the necessary commitment to fighting hunger when the issue climbs to a higher position on the political agenda. And this may not come about unless voters in rich countries see food insecurity as a problem that is in their self-interest to solve.

“I’m more comfortable with the justice message, but it’s right that it’s in the developed world’s interest to fight hunger, and any arguments you build to make the developed countries take action are positive,” Cavero says.

“The first thing governments and people in rich countries need to be aware of is the reality we are confronted with. Today we have more and more people in hunger, and the WFP have announced the shameful figure of one billion hungry people has been passed.”

While fear is one factor that might stir the well-fed, Dawe sees money as another: “On the economic level, there is a huge reservoir of potential demand for developed world products in developing countries if people break out of hunger and poverty.”

Cavero agrees: “We at Oxfam are aware of the role trade can have in economic development if it is conducted under fair rules, which is not the case now, along with strong transparent markets. Healthy growth would lead to improvements in overall welfare, which is good for the South and good for the North.

“It is in the North’s interest to have a developing world that is not suffering hunger because the whole economy suffers. If they are free from hunger, they can work on their own development. But you must be free from hunger before you can overcome poverty, and only then can you participate in the global economy. Hunger is a dead weight that’s too heavy to allow welfare to be achieved.”

Cavero believes that highlighting the link between food security and the threat of climate change is another way to give developed countries an incentive to act. If developing countries try to eliminate poverty and hunger by following the North’s resource-energy intensive model of development, global temperatures are set to accelerate.

“To get an agreement and action on climate change we must first make sure the developing world, where most of the world’s poverty and hunger is concentrated among poor farming communities, is tackling food security in a sustainable way so that we can put policies into place to avoid a global disaster,” Cavero says.

“We must achieve this through a sustainable model of agriculture. There is a chance to achieve a win-win-win scenario – a win for food security, a win for climate change, and a win for social, economic and environmental sustainability.”

Dawe says the developed world would benefit from the contribution people freed of food insecurity could make to science and culture.

“We’re living in an interdependent world. All knowledge is built on the insights and contributions of others,” he says.

“The more smart people are working on a problem, whether it be AIDS or global warming or anything else, the closer you get to finding an answer. The same argument applies to culture, art, music and other fields.

“Hunger and food insecurity are holding people back from reaching their own potential and contributing to humanity’s potential. We’re not as rich as we could be and I don’t mean in material terms.”

War on Want still believes the battleground should be social justice, not self- interest.

“The scandal is that many people who are producing food in rural areas cannot afford to buy what they produce. That’s a serious condemnation of the model we’ve allowed to grow,” says Hilary.

“What we need is a less exploitative model of agriculture. Vast areas of the developing world are being turned over to cattle grazing, or soy for cattle or biofuels so the rich world can eat more meat and drive around in ecological cars when the priority should be ensuring there is enough affordable food for everyone.

“I do believe the moral case is strong and that hunger is a profound challenge to our idea of progress. If we thought that our privileged lives depended on exploitation, more would be done. It’s a moral and political question.”

Reposted from Inter Press Service (IPS).

by Susan Thixton, citizen journalist

(NaturalNews) No paragraph should begin with ‘Renderers convert dead animals into…’ and end with ‘crayons.’ Yet this is exactly how the Introduction Paragraph started and ended in a report provided to the 108th Congress in 2004. The report provided to Congress discusses dead animals rendered into various products such as pet food and crayons.

The elected Representatives of the 108th Congress were provided a startling report in 2004; compiled by the Congressional Research Services, authored by Geoffrey S. Becker. The report titled Animal Rendering: Economics and Policy explained the processes of the Rendering Industry, and what the products they produce become part of.

The 2004 report to Congress is found in the library of Congressional Research Service. http://digital.library.unt.edu/govdocs/… It is the most recent information reported to Congress on the Rendering Industry (according to documents within the Congressional Research Service library). The ‘Introduction’ paragraph explains the little discussed industry. “Renderers convert dead animals and animal parts that otherwise would require disposal into a variety of materials, including edible and inedible tallow and lard and proteins such as meat and bone meal (MBM). These materials in turn are exported or sold to domestic manufacturers of a wide range of industrial and consumer goods such as livestock feed and pet food, soaps, pharmaceuticals, lubricants, plastics, personal care products, and even crayons.”

“And even crayons”? Dead animals and animal parts turned into crayons?

The Rendering Industry claims to be the ‘first recyclers’. Their task of removing waste material is disgusting to ponder; however, it is a necessary evil. “Renderers annually convert 47 billion pounds or more of raw animal materials into approximately 18 billion pounds of products.” Besides the leftovers from processing human foods in the U.S., ‘renderers collect and process about half of all livestock and poultry that die from diseases.’

Again…crayons?

To provide a complete understanding of rendering, the Congressional report explains the two types of rendering facilities. “Integrated plants operate in conjunction with animal slaughter and meat processing plants and handle 65%-70% of all rendered material.” These ‘integrated rendering plants’ render (or cook) “most edible animal byproducts (i.e., fatty animal tissue), mainly into edible fats (tallow and lard) for human consumption.” Of concern to consumers “These plants also render inedible byproducts (including slaughter floor waste) into fats and proteins for animal feeds and for other ingredients.” To the contrary of integrated rendering plants, “Independent operations handle the other 30%-35% of rendered material. They pick up and process fat and bone trimmings, inedible meat scraps, blood, feathers, and dead animals from meat and poultry slaughterhouses and processors, farms, ranches, feedlots, animal shelters, restaurants, butchers, and markets. Almost all of the resulting ingredients are destined for nonhuman consumption (e.g., animal feeds, industrial products).”

Diseased animals and dead animals removed from farms and/or animal shelters, rendered into animal feed (including pet foods), should be a violation of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. Federal law specifically prohibits any diseased animal or euthanized animal to become part of any food; human or animal. Despite Federal laws to prevent any food from containing a diseased animal, the FDA allows pet food to contain these rendered illegal ingredients. Although crayons are not classified as food, many, if not most children put them in their mouths; it is horrifying to think crayons could contain the remains of a diseased/dead animal.

It is simply incomprehensible to consider that no one of the 535 members of the 108th Congress, of which this report was prepared for, did anything to prevent children’s crayons from containing rendered dead animal parts; nothing to prevent pet food from violating Federal law.

For at least four years, our Representatives in Congress have been aware of, and done nothing to change the facts that rendered diseased animals and shelter pets become animal feed ingredients. Federal laws, developed by Congress to protect the foods of humans and animals, should have prevented this from ever being a concern. With more and more development of bio-fuel plants, why wasn’t someone of the 108th Congress thinking these horrendous rendered ingredients would be better used to produce bio-fuel than crayons and pet foods? It is long past time; immediate action is necessary to stop the rendered remains of diseased animals and shelter pets from becoming ingredients of pet foods, soaps, ‘and even crayons’. Hideous and criminal ingredients cannot continue to put children, pets, and their people at risk.

Wishing you and your pet(s) the best,
Susan Thixton

About the author

Susan Thixton has an international pet people following providing dog and cat lovers a trusted source for pet food and pet food ingredient information. She’s been called courageous, perseverant, even “the Caped Crusader for Pets” for her 16 year study of pet food. Susan Thixton is the author of hundreds of pet industry articles and the 2006 released book Truth About Pet Food (currently being updated for a second edition). She developed and publishes the pet product consumer magazine Petsumer Report and is a frequent speaker and radio guest all over the U.S. and Canada with more than 70 appearances in the last 2 years.
If you are looking for straight forward pet food information that can have an almost immediate impact on your pet’s health – subscribe to the free newsletter, and subscribe to Petsumer Report to see reviews of close to 700 dog and cat foods and treats (adding 40+ each month). Susan Thixton’s ‘truth’ will help you find a safer, healthier dog or cat food that could add years to your pet’s life. http://www.TruthAboutPetFood.com

Reprinted from NaturalNews.

1 Blatant Propaganda

BP’s new logo and name change to ‘Beyond Petroleum’ in 2000 was derided by environmentalists as a shameless case of greenwash. Solar-powered petrol stations? What was the point? However, in the public imagination, the company effectively rebranded itself as ‘green’.

The company ran a major PR campaign in 2005 to coincide with the G8 summit in Scotland. Newspaper adverts trumpeted its investments in alternative energy, despite renewables comprising only 5.7 per cent whilst 72 per cent was being spent on looking for and extracting more oil and gas.

Plans were announced to build a power station at Peterhead, Scotland, which would convert natural gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide (CO2), using the hydrogen to generate electricity while the CO2 would be pumped into depleted gas fields under the North Sea. Never mind that carbon capture and storage technologies were still in their infancy, and no-one could be sure whether the CO2 would stay underground or escape into the atmosphere. A secondary motive was that pumping CO2 into depleted gas fields allows additional natural gas to be extracted from the field. The Peterhead project required a heavy Government subsidy, so BP asked for it to be treated as a renewable energy project.

In May 2007, with considerably less fanfare, the plans were shelved. This closely followed the fall from power of John Browne, BP’s long-serving CEO and architect of the ‘Beyond Petroleum’ makeover.

Meanwhile, BP’s massive oil and gas extraction projects continue around the world: in Angola, one of the world’s most corrupt countries, where oil enriches the Government without reaching the people; in West Papua, where BP’s Tangguh natural gas development has been criticized for ignoring the human rights of local indigenous people and contributing to environmental problems; and in Alaska where two major leaks in its oil pipeline have been blamed on wilful negligence and the harassment of employees who voiced concern. BP has also just been fined $373 million by the US Department of Justice for price-fixing and an explosion at a Texas refinery that killed 15 and injured 170.

Oilwatch is a network that opposes the activities of oil companies in the Majority World http://www.oilwatch.org/

Activists against Big Oil’s sponsorship of the arts http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/

2 Just don’t mention dead babies

The World Health Organization estimates that 1.5 million children die each year because they are not adequately breastfed. Corporations’ aggressive marketing of breastmilk substitutes, especially in the Majority World, is part of the problem, encouraging mothers to give up breastfeeding in favour of expensive, nutritionally inferior milk formula.

Nestlé is the worst offender and has become one of the world’s most boycotted companies as a result. So what does it do? Change its practices? No chance.

On the milk formula issue, it simply denies the problem. Nestlé’s website claims: ‘Nestlé actually stopped advertising and promotion to the public in the developing world in the late 1970s and abides by the WHO’s International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes.’ But recent research by the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) found ‘nothing more than a concerted effort to simply avoid many of the core provisions of this Code.’

Instead, to clean up its image, the company favours ‘cause-related marketing’ – associating itself with good causes, especially anything connected to children, to create ‘goodwill’. One example is the ‘Make Space’ young people’s clubs campaign – a ‘partnership’ between Nestlé and the charity 4Children which, whatever good work it’s doing, is doing it plastered with Nestlé logos. Does 4Children know Nestlé’s real attitude to charitable giving? In March 2005 Nestlé CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathé told the Boston Herald: ‘Companies should only pursue charitable endeavours with an underlying intention of making money for investors.’

Unsurprising, then, that it launched the ‘box tops for education’ scheme, which gives small amounts of cash to schools when they send in the tops off Nestlé cereal boxes (collected by the schoolchildren). Nestlé demonstrates how nice it is by giving tax-deductible donations to schools and gets the schools to market its products.

IBFAN is campaigning on baby milk internationally http://www.ibfan.org/

Boycott Nestle http://www.babymilkaction.org/

3 The high priest of Corporate Responsibility

Mining company Anglo-American acknowledges the difficulties its industry faces in the ‘Chairman’s View’ section of its 2006 Corporate Responsibility report: ‘Mining involves the extraction of a non-renewable natural resource and, therefore, presents distinct challenges in relation to sustainable development.’

A recent War on Want report into the activities of Anglo-American and its related companies alleged links with the murder of trade unionists in Colombia, cyanide pollution in Africa, forced displacement of communities in several countries and collaboration with armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The ‘challenge of sustainable development’ is clearly not being met.

Anglo-American’s Chair, Mark Moody-Stuart, has been at the heart of the Corporate Responsibility movement for years. He took over as Chair of Shell in 1997 at a time when the oil company was seen as a notorious corporate criminal, following the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Moody-Stuart oversaw Shell’s equally notorious rebranding as an ethically and environmentally responsible company, even though business-as-usual continued.

Moody-Stuart went on to lead the ‘Business Action for Sustainable Development’ (BASD) initiative, launched in 2001 to prepare for the 2002 UN Earth Summit in Johannesburg. BASD spearheaded the successful effort by corporations at the summit to avoid any chance of international regulation of their activities, pushing instead for ‘voluntary regulation’ and ineffective ‘partnerships’ with governments and NGOs.

It’s hard to tell whether Moody-Stuart and his ilk believe their own spin. But after 10 years heading dirty extractive companies and as a director of HSBC Bank, which funds deforestation of the Amazon for soya plantations as well as oil and mining projects, you’d think he might have started to notice that his efforts aren’t changing the world for the better.

Communities around the world are campaigning against mining:  http://www.minesandcommunities.org/

War on Want: www.waronwant.org/?lid=14777

4 Supermarket sweatwash

The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) is one of the world’s leading ‘multi-stakeholder’ endeavours, a partnership between NGOs, trade unions and companies aimed at improving working conditions in the Majority World.

Corporations make much of their membership. British supermarket giant Tesco’s Corporate Responsibility Review boasts: ‘As a founder member of the ETI we strive towards high labour standards throughout our supply chain by using the ETI Base Code as the standard with which our suppliers must comply.’ A sweeping statement which might reassure the casual concerned shopper, but does not actually say all clothes are produced in accordance with the Base Code, nor whether it is making any difference. Evidence shows it is not.

Supermarkets are increasingly taking over clothing markets in industrialized countries, but an investigation by ActionAid into Bangladeshi garment factories which supply supermarkets has shown that pressure to squeeze costs is what dominates buyers’ actions. Much of the pain is falling on the workers. The ETI code calls for workers to be paid a living wage, which even Tesco estimates as $47 per month in Bangladesh. Yet most are still on the minimum wage of just 1,665 taka ($26). Often they must work seven days a week even to make that much. There are no contracts and an anti-union culture prevails.

A worker in a factory supplying Asda/Wal-Mart described the systematic deception of ‘social auditors’. ‘When buyers come to visit, everything is changed. We are asked to wear scarves and masks. The floors and toilets are cleaned… They give stools to the helpers so that they can sit and work… But as soon as the buyers leave, all these things are removed.’

The ETI’s own monitoring of its Code found that it had had ‘almost no impact’ in ensuring workers receive a living wage or have the freedom to organize. Factory managers complained it was difficult to improve labour practices given the aggressive purchasing practices of the retailers and brands buying from them. The most frequently cited problems were short lead times, inflexible deadlines, and falling prices.

Unless big supermarkets change their buying practices, the ETI Code will only be there to persuade shoppers that it really is ethically okay to buy those $8 jeans.

ActionAid is campaigning for binding regulation to ensure that supermarkets play fair in the Majority World:  www.actionaid.org.uk

Rebecca Spencer

Reprinted from New Internationalist (NI)

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.