[ExI] bees again

BillK pharos at gmail.com
Tue Mar 5 10:32:22 UTC 2013


On Mon, Mar 4, 2013 at 3:07 PM, Anders Sandberg  wrote:
> Read up on the history of food fraud. People have been lying about what they
> have been selling (illegal) since forever - the Romans and Greek had laws
> instituted to deal with wine and olive oil adulteration. Check out:
> http://www.pbs.plymouth.ac.uk/PLR/vol1/Shears_proofedv.pdf
> http://www.amazon.com/Swindled-History-Poisoned-Counterfeit-Coffee/dp/0691138206

Agreed, that throughout history, everywhere people have traded, people
have swindled each other.
(One of the main objections to unregulated markets).

But in olden times, there were no fridges, so stuff was added to hide
the taste and smell of bad meat. Often life was a choice between
eating bad food or starving. People didn't wash, city streets were
running sewers and covered in filth and water was often polluted. Life
was short, brutal and nasty. If you were likely to be dead anyway by
30 or 40, then you had more important things to worry about than
honest food. Though attempts were indeed made to stop the worst frauds
of basic foods.


There is a difference in scale with food fraud today. Multi-national
corporations in league with governments are adulterating food in huge
volume across the whole world. Modern food processing is full of
adulteration, some allowed, some not. Like adding water to cold meat
products (allowed) or cheap fish substituting for expensive fish
(illegal).

Quote from Reuters:
    Multinational food, drink and alcohol companies are using
strategies similar to those employed by the tobacco industry to
undermine public health policies, health experts said on Tuesday.
    In an international analysis of involvement by so-called
“unhealthy commodity” companies in health policy-making, researchers
from Australia, Britain, Brazil and elsewhere said … that through the
aggressive marketing of ultra-processed food and drink, multinational
companies were now major drivers of the world’s growing epidemic of
chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
    Writing in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers cited
industry documents they said revealed how companies seek to shape
health legislation and avoid regulation.
----------------


That's my main point - today's food adulteration is big business on an
industrial scale.


BillK




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