Food miles, and miles, and miles
The New York Times reported on some startling examples of silly food miles. All made possible because of (relatively) cheap oil/transportations costs and lower wages in some parts of the world. Unfortunately whilst this may keep some people in work in china or wherever, it does mean that the local people who used to do the job are out of work, and all in the name of cheap food…
Here are some of the silly examples:
- Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale
- Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground
- Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya
- Britain imports -and exports- 15,000 tons of waffles every yea
Fuel used for international transport is tax-free, thanks to a treaty signed in 1944 to help the airline industry - so who is paying for the pollution and carbon dumped into the atmosphere? It’s about time that the governments of the world got together and put forward a unified ‘polluter pays’ policy that would help see an end to this ridiculous practice.
Hat tip to TreeHugger for reporting on the above article.
