Making things more expensive - for 'their own' good.

Isn't that the original premise for "value added" tax ?

Harsh, but true.

I apply the same principle to the cost of buying rabbits. £20 deems them a throwaway item....a second-rate pet. Make them minimum £100 each, in fact make all pets a minimum £100 each.

Are we talking pets or food here ?

Rabbit stew anyone

I think a 140 character limit really only applies to the inanities of Twitter.

Don't need twitter for that.

Prime stallion is clearly far to cheap these days.

Saying that, I did have horse stew once in France and quite tasty it was too.  

The serious point being that I cannot believe horse is cheaper than cow as an 'additive'.  It's a bit like finding caviar as unexpected fill in a fishcake .......ok maybe that's an extreme example but it makes the point.  G

The main causes of food wastage - over here at least:

• Overuse of expiry dates, ensuring that food, while still edible, is thrown out and bought anew.
• Consumer demand for perfect produce.

Is the latter worsened by EU regulation I wonder? G

The initial concept of the Common Market was to regulate food prices so that production remained attractive and stable.

Then the Pirates (EU Administrators) jumped on board to regulate everything, taking a large slice of the cake in the process.

Any concept of making things more expensive "fortheir own good" is deliberately misleading but absolutely true - "their" = the EU Administrators.

Cheers

Don

Chaps

Unfortunately I am now 64 and I can remember back to the days when you bought food from corner shops.

It was usually pretty manky compared to what we buy today and the choice was limited.

Today your potatos look like pototos and your cabbage doesn't come with the obligatory caterpillar. You can buy fresh veg, or ready made meals, you have also the choice of foreign stuff such as curries or pizzas, in fact it is so common, kids today probably regard pizza as traditional British food.

The simple truth is that farming has undergone a revolution since the war and we now have more choice, better quality and yes lower prices compared to the national income then ever before.

Food production and the supply logistics in getting it from field to table are better now than at any other time.

The simple truth it's better than what its ever been.

Regards

Mick

Mick,

   Does that include GM food?

The subject of GM food is complex and I can understand the objections from an environmental point of view, pollen pollution etc.

However on the other hand, the development is mainly a speeded up evolutionary process, so the food can be adapted to our needs, it is more disease resistant and you can feed more people per acre which is important when many people in the world are actually starving.

The main thing from my point of view, is that accurate labelling identifies what you are buying and that you have the choice to buy GM or not.

Regards

Mick

Food production and supply overlooks a basic formula, in that if it costs more energy to obtain it and  consume it than you will get out of it, you are doomed. Any ant knows that. We, being a superior race are far too intelligent to let that get in the way of our sooner than necessary extinction. Not to mention the short term plundering of resources which could be stretched for hundreds more years.

We've got populations starving whilst crops are grown to make into fuel, so that we can drive past local shops selling local produce on our way to the supermarket. Not that we now have much choice. The ants will win in the end.

It's about time sellers were taxed on the the full energy consumption of delivering food to their shelves. It'll never happen. Still, they've saved the world once already by charging for carrier bags. Time to re concentrate on making more profit.

On the original question it is unarguable that in the developed world people now spend a much smaller proportion of their income on food compared to, say, 100 years ago.  People also have a vastly greater variety of foods from which to chose.  Today very few people need go hungry - a good thing - but affordability and accessibility has also lead to health concerns in the choices that people make.  And while some complain about the 'nanny state' seeking to step in and influence such choices, there's a strong economic argument to reduce the financial burden on health and other public services from persuading people to look after themselves in diet and exercise etc.  Many governments use tax to try to influence peoples behaviour, most obviously tobacco, so it is only natural that arguments arise about using price, either through tax or a voluntary code of conduct with retailers, to dis-incentivise people from buying high sugar, saturated fat products deemed "bad" for them.  The problem that democratic governments wrestle with here, apart from the obvious things like measure design and producing compelling evidence to justify it, is that these things tend to be regressive.  By that I mean such measures tend to bear most heavily on those on lowest incomes and least on the well-off.  Example: putting an additional 50p on a bottle of wine has a proportionately greater impact on those people who would only buy a bottle costing about £5 compared to those who might say "I wouldn't touch anything under £20 a bottle!".  Regressive measures usually make 'bad politics', no matter how strong the underlying scientific and/or economic evidence.  

MDS

Don

I think you are being a little unfair here.  The Common Market's objective, or more accurately the Common Agricultural Policy, was originally conceived to banish for ever the food shortages that had plagued much of western Europe for the past 100 years or so. And those shortages arising from WWII were still very much in living memory of the founders of the CM. That objective has been successively achieved.  There have been some unwelcome side effects of the policies used in pursuit of that objective eg the distortionary impact on many African economies of keeping food prices within the EU artificially high, and the consequential frauds that have been stimulated by market distortions.  But in the wider scheme of things I think it hard to find fault in what those original architects set out to achieve, even if the execution has had many flaws.

MDS 

I heard the original debate around this comment, made by a House of Lords member. Much of her point was about the wider 'value' of food, that it is not not just cheap but it is easy. We have a plethora of choice, no longer constrained by seasons or weather. We also have simple pre-prepared foods, access to multiple ingredients and generally very safe food. We are also removed from the realities of production and farming so we see food as a consumer item not a natural resource. Her comments were that we need to respect food and food supply morre, waste less and use it better.

I pretty much agreed with all of that.

Bruce 

MDS

I agree with what you said.

I simply condensed it into my first two-line sentence.

Cheers

Don

Another very simple reason that food is wasted is that we don't shop for what we want when we need it as we did before supermarkets and refrigerators, we tend to shop once a week in an unplanned manner and buy things that we don't need. This along with the silly 'Use Before" dates means good food is wasted by the ton every week. 

One trick, if your family size allows, is to go to the supermarket by bus. Then you can only buy what you can carry.

Another con, which leads to wastage, is the claim that there is a hazard in refreezing thawed goods - this is rarely the case. I (a doctor) and a microbiologist friend have refrozen stuff for years without problems. We discovered each other's guilty little secret by chance.

Fraser

The food can be either consumed or wasted.

If we want to avoid waste, then the discussion should be around taxing the garbage. 

Composting helps a bit, but you do need a little space...and if you don't have a garden, then what's the point?

It would also help if more people lived closer to where they work and shop.  It makes more frequent stops at the grocer, buying something fresh to be cooked that evening or eaten the next day, more practical.  This also makes buying organic produce more practical, since there's less worry over spoilage.

Actually, it's kind of scary how long some produce stay fresh.  Give me a locally grown, yet irregular looking, organic tomato that turns soft in a day or two versus a mass produced orb of hydroponic perfection that stays edible for a week and half....but never actually tastes like a real tomato.

Lastly, while there have been some good points made about wasting the food itself....what about the incredible amount of waste from processed food packaging?  The marketing of food using attractive packaging drives me nuts, and especially when the target market is kids.  The cereal isle is absurd! And where do all of those empty packages wind up?  At the incinerator... resulting in a nice cloud of dioxins for us all to breath.

Rant over.

Hook

I suppose the only solution that will satisfy the environmental lobby is for us all to go back to living in caves and eating raw meat and a few berries. Well, either that or total extiction of mankind.

Everything else is optional.

Cheers

Don

Hi Don -

Almost all the environmentalists I've talked to here in the US would settle for a serious discussion of the state of the planet.  I am talking to guys from the Sierra Club -- not exactly a bunch of "radicals".

There are just way too many people are living in complete denial of what is happening to the polar ice, to the ocean levels and currents, and to our resulting weather systems.  The big question they have is:  what will it take for right-wing politicians to stop denying reality, and start acknowledging what the vast majority of scientists have been saying for decades?  Most fear it will take a catastrophe of biblical proportion -- most likely a major disruption to the world's food supply, and the starvation death of millions...

Caves?  No, nobody I talk to is advocating a return to hunting and gathering.  But the days of paying for the carbon footprint we create cannot be far away.  The cost of that footprint to the planet for that recklessness is far too high.  Everyone I know believes in individuals taking responsibility for their actions, so it is, therefore, pretty hard to argue against individuals taking fiscal responsibility for the global environmental impact they are having.

And for the record, I don't claim to be perfect.  For example, I leave my Naim setup on all the time.  But other than that, I have tried to take quite as many common sense steps as I can:  living close to where I work, fluorescent bulbs, high efficiency water heater, composting, recycling and so on.  And the funny thing is, I don't feel like any of these steps have presented any kind of burden...or even an inconvenience!

ATB.

Hook

Hello Hook,

Your post above deserves far more time to respond to than I currently am able to devote, so genuine apologies in advance for the brief and superficial reply and any bluntness contained therein.

Not all scientists are agreed that we have global warming.

Not all scientists are agreed on the cause(s) and effects of global warming. Not all are agreed on the importance and relative contributions of different human activity to global warming.

Just as importantly, not all scientists are agreed on what contribution any of our efforts will be to avoiding future effects and catastrophes that global warming might otherwise bring.

If the scientists can’t agree, there is little chance of persuading politicians of any persuasion to mobilise the resources of mankind to change our habits.

My understanding of climate and the effects of human activity thereon is limited. I have read a few books eg “Sustainable Energy-without the hot air” and “The Great Ice Age-climate change and life”. I have spoken to a few professors and practicing environmentalists. There does appear to be a general consensus that global warming is a fact and that anthropogenic causes are significant. I personally accept this. I am not totally convinced, but accept it.

However, I am not convinced we have even begun to understand whether a change in mankind’s activity can avoid perceived catastrophes or the extent of such required change if it were to be effective. In other words, I am not convinced that even total cessation of human agriculture and industrial activity will be enough to prevent global warming and it consequences.

Meanwhile, if we are truly concerned about the sustainability of our planet and mankind, there are many other matters to address with respect to oxygen supply, water supply, food production, utilisation of irreplaceable resources…. The list goes on.

There are too many of us on the planet IMHO for our current level of ingenuity. Perhaps we should try to limit further growth or try to reverse future population growth until ingenuity catches up.

Meanwhile, I think many of the activities we currently pursue in the name of the “environment” are haphazard, and largely ineffective. I still play my part, I eat less, I drive more economically, I have insulated my house and turned the thermostat down, I consider the “whole-life cost” of most things I use in terns of the environment, despite there being little useful information available, etc etc but basically, at present I think we are doing little more than re-arranging the deck chairs on the sinking Titanic.

I somehow think we might be agreed on more things than we disagree upon. Not sure.

Cheers

Don

Dear Don,

I tend to agree with you. I don't think there is necessarily anything that can be done to avoid climate change and the consequent loss of food production capacity. The greater proportion of our current seven billion human population is certainly doomed. Whether the human will become extinct within the next century is altogether a different question.

The question in my mind is just how long we can go consuming and polluting as we are now, even without causing a significant change to the rate of climate change?

I make certain choices myself that make my consumption [at a personal level] as small as is possible whilst being healthy and comfortable - living near enough to work to avoid using powered transport for commuting, buying exactly the food I will use and buy at least every other day so as to avoid throwing it away un-used, being two aspects. Probably the best improvement I have made over the last three years is refraining from using air transport. I cannot rule out ever using it again of course, but certainly not more than once a year. If the ferry and rail services either existed or were more economical then i would prefer to use them instead of air transport, but ferries directly to Oslo from the UK were curtailed many years ago now. 

I take one or two thoughts as being reassuring in my own case. I live in a relatively very rich country compared to most on the planet, so mass starvation is more likely in other places first, and secondly, I am 51, so probably dead before the disaster hits the UK in the first place.

I am aware that there is absolutely no point in worrying about a problem that there is nothing I can do to alter, so I now refuse to worry, even though I care very much ... I just try to do the right things without worrying about their effectiveness even remotely having an effect on the outcome.

ATB from George