By Nao Nakanishi
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Beijing should avoid the U.S. model of letting only a few companies dominate its entire food supply chain, a specialist said as Beijing steps up efforts to improve China’s food safety record.
While focusing on the rapid growth of industrial farming, Beijing might not be aware of associated risks for food safety, the environment and farmers, James Harkness, president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, told Reuters over the weekend.
“In the U.S. the most severe food safety threat comes from factory farm production,” said Harkness. The private think-tank promotes a sustainable food system around the world.
“Although in China the government is very enthusiastic about free markets, I think the lesson of the U.S. is that food and food safety is one area where there is a market failure,” he said on his way to China from Minneapolis.
With Beijing vowing to step up safety measures following a series of scandals, including chemical-tainted pet food, the institute is to launch an initiative in China this week to help build a more sustainable and safer food system.
“China is a place where we feel … food system problems are very severe. It’s also a country where we think there may be some opportunities to improve the situation,” Harkness said, referring to Beijing’s stated goals to improve farmer welfare and the environment.
He lashed out at a plan by Beijing to create a system for the 2008 Olympics, in which 95 percent of food was to be bought in supermarkets because it assumed them to be modern, clean and safe.
“The question of what impact this has on everybody in the food system, including farmers and consumers, is one that hasn’t been discussed in detail,” Harkness said.
SELF-RULE, MANURE
Referring to a recent pet food scandal, Harkness said it was one example of how challenges grew with the concentration of the food industry ownership, the scale of operation and the length and complexity of the food supply chain.
“People need to look beyond the problems in China and also think about the types of trading rules we have globally and the types of food safety regulations,” he said. “You cannot assume the industry would voluntarily comply with the regulation.”
Harkness also said the Bush administration had made an error of allowing a shift in food safety enforcement and responsibilities away from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to a system of self regulation by the food industry.
This month, an FDA team visited China to investigate how the chemical product melamine got into pet food, killing several pets in the United States and leading to a recall of more than 100 brands of pet food.
Looking at China’s livestock industry, which includes the world’s biggest pig and poultry population, he said growing industrial farming was a serious threat to the country’s water.
“The growth in this sector has been huge,” he said, referring to companies including Mengniu Dairy, one of the biggest in the country.
“The waste production from animal production now is really the number-one water pollution problem in mainland China. They have much larger volume than all of industrial wastes combined.”
