Photo Credit: Limonada

I think what disturbs me about this Reuters news piece even more than the Let them Eat Mud story that I posted about mud cake consumption in Haiti, is that the government in Bihar, India, is actively promoting it.

Just to be clear. It's official government policy for people to eat rats. (The full story here and below.)

It's a useful case to ruminate over. What is it, after all, that's so appalling here? Clearly the idea of eating vermin is, by definition, distasteful, but what a culture decides is edible, and what is pestilent, isn't written in our DNA. As we used to chorus in Sociology 101: "it's a social construct". Some think pork is as dirty as rat. Some think that by renaming pigeons as 'squab', they'll taste better.

That people are eating rodents isn't the only thing that should turn our stomachs, though. The Bihari government endorsement of rat-eating is simultaneously a sign of defeat. They've given up on fighting poverty so that people can afford to eat. Given up on trying to protect the grain harvests with decent infrastructure. Given up, almost, on their people.

In a time of scarce resources and rising hunger, rat-eating becomes a handy technical fix. After all, what is rat-eating but a technology to increase nutrition and eliminate the use of pesticides and the need for secure grain storage?

And if we're appalled by this, and we should be, then how different is this from the logic that justifies Golden Rice? After all, doesn't golden rice become useful only when governments have resigned themselves to the fact that the only thing people can afford to eat is rice? That the healthcare system can't be resuscitated? That the best technology to fix the problem is one that doesn't address it?

_______________________ ... read more »

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Posted on 20 August, 2008 - 15:27

While this post isn't exactly about food, it is about the hypocrisy with which developed countries pretend to fight hunger on the one hand, and cause it on the other.

This is a graph of what embassies pay their security staff in Zambia. In none of the cases does the pay meet the requirements to feed a family of six in Lusaka, according to a union report. Predictably, at the bottom of the list, paying six times less than what a family needs to survive, is the World Bank. The full list, from best paying to worst, below the fold. ... read more »

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Posted on 20 August, 2008 - 14:53

Here's another fine article from Walden Bello, reposted from Business Daily Africa

Africa’s food crisis the handiwork of IMF, World Bank

Walden Bello

Despite being a net food exporter at independence, Africa now imports 25 per cent of her food from donors.

August 18, 2008: At the time of decolonisation in the 1960s, Africa was not just self-sufficient in food but was actually a net food exporter.

Its exports averaged 1.3 million tonnes a year between 1966-70. But today, the continent imports 25 per cent of its food, with almost every country being a net food importer. ... read more »

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Posted on 18 August, 2008 - 19:16

The title of this post is an economics and public health pun in very poor taste. But the story behind it is fairly unsavoury too.

Two academics, David Stuckler at Cambridge University and Sanjay Basu at Yale recently looked into the effects of the IMF's policy impacts on public service reform in the former Soviet Union, using tuberculosis as an indicator. Their full results are here, but here's the bottom line:

After correcting for confounding variables, as well as potential detection, selection, and ecological biases, we observed that participating in an IMF program was associated with increased tuberculosis incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates by 13.9%, 13.2%, and 16.6%, respectively. ... read more »

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Posted on 18 August, 2008 - 18:31

There are a number of theories going around about the demise of the WTO talks. Mine are here but a couple of others worth noting are by Martin Khor, here and Devinder Sharma. I particularly like Devinder's take - which shifts the blame entirely toward the US reluctance to give up cotton subsidies. It's something we got to discuss a little when Devinder helped to launch Stuffed and Starved in Delhi last week (thanks Devinder!). I'm not sure I agree that the elections in India has nothing at all to do with the outcome, but we're both agreed that soon enough, the talks will be back from the dead. Indeed, if the Third World Network is to be believed, the corpse of the talks is already being revivified by Lula and Lamy.

Meanwhile, just to bust a hole in the Third World vs First World narrative that some have tried to spin around these talks, here's a press release from the US National Family Farm Coalition, applauding their demise... ... read more »

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Posted on 18 August, 2008 - 16:53

The Financial Times has a nice wee mini-site on the food crisis, here. Some good data to be had, if you're looking...

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Posted on 18 August, 2008 - 16:40

Some good-ish news from the world of agribusiness. Monsanto has reported that it's leaving the recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone business. The Ethicurean asks whether Monsanto's exit from the market might be because people are worried about the toxic effects of rBGH in their milk. Monsanto, however, insists that "This is really a great product… Business has been strong. Sales have been strong." So that's all cleared up then.

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Posted on 18 August, 2008 - 16:35

A little while ago I hailed a popular victory against a NAFTA-compliance measure that would spray large parts of Northern California with a toxin that hadn't been tested on people before, to eliminate a threat that wasn't a threat at all.

Turns out I was a little premature.

From the Retort mailing list comes this update... ... read more »

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Posted on 18 August, 2008 - 16:27