Two quotes and a phone call

"A person buying ordinary products in a supermarket is in touch with his deepest emotions" John Kenneth Galbraith

I've had that quote from John Kenneth Galbraith in my Ideas list for a long time. I wasn't quite sure what Galbraith meant, and I suspect, being an economist, that he wasn't really thinking the same things as have come to my attention today, from the phone call from a friend. There is so much to say about supermarket labels, and I know I have said lots of them before now.

I suspect Galbraith's focus would have been on price and supply, both of which are of immense importance to us all - particularly those with less income and resources - rather than those of us in the more fortunate sectors of society. The focus of the phone call was more on ethics - in a broad sense. Which is also the focus - although with a wider range of issues - of my other quote - also lurking in my ideas list:

"Guardian readers ought by now to be familiar with the exercise of undoing the commodity fetish. Scratch the surface of a bar of chocolate, a tuna sandwich, or even a chicken nugget, and you find the horrors of international trade: violence, exploitation, poverty and profit. Raj Patel – Guardian

What made me retrieve Galbraith's quote and then the other one, was the phone call - which was a catch up about this and that - but at one point it became about the recent Food fraud and danger topic screened on the ABC's Four Corners program. Now I have not seen it, so am just going on the report on their website, and my friend's comments. However, what I got from both, was an overall impression that the food industry and the supermarkets were pretty evil, and we shouldn't believe anything they say. Maybe that's not fair. Journalists should indeed be investigating the bad things and exposing criminals of every shade. However that broad stroke idea that the supermarkets and the food industry as a whole is out to exploit us is what people generally take from such reports. And let's face it , it gets publicity for the people who bring it all to our attention.

There seem to have been two main components of the eight month of investigations by the ABC in conjunction with an internationally highly regarded company Source Certain which tested various products for country of origin and also for dangerous components in the food.

I knew that part of the investigation was all about the lies behind several 100% Australian labels - as in the Turmeric powder above - and I have to say in an ignorant moment I thought to myself, well surely turmeric is imported anyway, so you'd be stupid to think it was 100% Australian. But of course, Australia being as vast as it is and encompassing several different climatic zones, Australia does indeed grow turmeric. However, the real criticism here was adulteration:

"Four Hoyt's turmeric packets were tested. Three had signs of adulteration, including lead chromate, a lead based yellow pigment used in paints and plastics that is not permitted to be added to food in Australia. "

Which I guess implies that it's also not 100% Australian. Hoyt's were said to be alarmed and were going to do their own testing.

I won't go into the details of what Four Corners discovered. All of it alarming - particularly the adulteration of foods - sometimes just to bulk out what it's supposed to be - e.g. olive leaves in packets of oregano, and sometimes, much more seriously with toxic ingredients which ranged from powdered rock, through, arsenic to salmonella infected fish.

As well as food they also tested alcohol for dangerous additives, but - for me anyway - the sample was so small as to be almost irrelevant, unless you were buying the two products tested - Dirty George spirits (does the name slyly tell us there is a problem?) and Tom Cobb whiskey. I am in no way disbelieving the validity of their results, just wondering what this tells us about the whole massive range of alcohol available to us - amongst which a few may be guilty, but probably the majority are not.

Going back to country of origin - it seems that even if it says 100% Australian apparently there are often elements of material from elsewhere - China and Vietnam being the big 'criminals' here. e.g. Leggo's tomato products. Tomato products in general in fact:

"one in four of the tested tomato products sold in supermarkets and retail outlets failed forensic country-of-origin testing"

I suppose there are two aspects to this - fraud and also an implied criticism of anything from China and elsewhere. Possibly true, for all sorts of reasons, possibly not.

It's all very alarming, and to be fair they admit that it's not necessarily the fault of any one sector or company in the complicated food chain of goods from the farm to the supermarket shelf. Although they did throw in that:

"organised crime is involved. It is much easier to make money from food fraud than from people smuggling or selling drugs," International food safety auditor and trainer, Clare Winkel

It's also not just the fault of the food industry itself they say - it's also the fault of governments and food regulators. Underfunded and not enough seems to be the finding here. Which, indeed may well be true. They say that "more than 98 per cent of testing at the border is compliant" but imply that the testing is not sufficient.

And perhaps being a devil's advocate I would say that their own testing is also not sufficient. I'm sure that what was tested was rigorously done to the highest of standards - the testers for example, did not know whose products they were testing - no labels - just numbers - but what was tested was but a small tip of what is probably an iceberg. Or maybe not.

The Four Corners report will of course be a disaster for the companies named in it from supermarkets to manufacturers, which may well be unfair. Perhaps the rest of the companies are breathing a huge sigh of relief that they were not included in the testing.

So what do we do? Do we read every tiny bit of information on every label of everything we buy - and that includes fresh food as well as processed food? I do try - like my friend - to buy Australian where possible - but I also buy products - such as tinned tomatoes - from elsewhere - in that case Italy. I'm also dimly aware that some Italian tomatoes are grown/processed by virtual slave labour. At least that's what various reports tell us. However, there is no real way we can tell whether what we are buying satisfies every criteria we could apply - taste, value, ethical dilemmas of many kinds, our likes or dislikes of particular countries ...

And always bear in mind that food has always been subject to meddling by people out to make a quick buck. Since time immemorial. Even growing and processing your own food - obviously not achievable if you are an ordinary town dweller - and increasingly the world's population overwhelmingly lives in towns - self-sufficiency does not guarantee safety or value for money - even if you don't use fertilisers. Is the ground safe from trace elements, is the rain pure ...?

I always find myself to be a little ambivalent about reports such as this Four Corners one. Yes of course we should seek out wrong-doing and we should encourage governments to lift their game in the areas that matter, but at the same time we increase the risk of tarring everyone with the same brush, when just a few are guilty. We cannot possibly test every tin, packet, agricultural product that comes into the country and into our food processing and packaging plants.

I guess we can avoid buying processed food. 'If you don't know what an ingredient is in that ingredient list, then don't by the product' is a good bit of advice. As is to take note of the main ingredients - if the first ingredient is sugar (unless you are buying sugar) - then don't buy it. Or salt or ... Yes do try to buy Australian even if there is a chance that some of it is not truly Australian. I'm guessing that the bulk of products so labelled, genuinely are. Or you can just buy what you feel like buying - and can afford - and not worry. I'm somewhere in the middle I suspect - I do my best to be an ethical shopper as well as not being foolish about cost - but I'm not going to have nightmares about it.

But do watch the program if you want to be alarmed - no - more properly informed than I am (it will be available on iView). But always bear in mind these words of wisdom from Marcus Aurelius:

"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."

YEARS GONE BY

August 6

2025 - Wild rice

2024 - A freezer challenge

2023 - Nothing

2022 - Greens and bread

2021 - Missing

2020 - Missing

2019 - How farmers' markets can save the day

2018 - Should you spend money on your kitchen and tableware?

2017 - Nothing

2016 - Mushrooms