Small world of food

If we want to have:

• A wide variety of choice in the foods we eat
• Predictable supply, available at any time we choose to shop or eat (24/7 in many cases)
• Priced competitively to suit every pocket

(and all the signs are that we do), then it follows that supply chains must grow in length, to even out the natural variations in supply. The freezing & packing of meat close to the source of supply also addresses the problem of distress when live animals are transported over long distances to market.

Eat local, eat seasonal, buy from suppliers small enough to know the name of the animal from which the meat was cut, or the grower of the fruit & veg, then your choice will be restricted – no oranges, olive oil, cinnamon, aubergine, rice or tuna grown here. There will be gluts – even strawberries or runner beans lose their attraction when served day after day. And shortages – the water-logged fields round here present a very sorry sight just now.

Shops will most likely not have the staff to stay open all hours, & you will have to struggle with your baskets as you go in, out, in, out the length of the street, come rain or shine.

And what on earth will we do with all the bits of animal we don’t want to eat?

We do not like eating horse in our hamburgers – especially unknowingly. But we don’t seem to mind eating beef paste or hot dogs made with chicken – the ingredients are declared on the label.

To anyone who remembers all the 1960s pessimism about our ability to feed the world – which then contained fewer than half as many people it does today – the fact that we remain, for the most part, very well fed is an amazing achievement.

Our current pessimism instils us with fear that we may be killing ourselves with too much food, or at least with bad nutrition, despite the continuing improvements in longevity.

We persist in the strange belief that Nature orders these things better than does Man, with his soulless application of industrial methods to the production of food, despite the plain fact that those scary flu threats all come from places where people live in all too-close proximity to the animals.

We must wait & see what has gone wrong. At the moment it looks more like a breakdown of trust, rather than any real culpability on the part of major manufacturers & food processors. Perhaps driven by the pressing need to keeps prices down – we’re in favour of that too. As of today it seems to be the smaller organisations in the chain which have given in to the temptation to cheat, perhaps because of feeling their backs to the wall in these difficult economic times & the cutting off of the supply of cheap meat recovered from carcases.

LinkHorse meat scandal
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