Karen wrote: >I agree with Chris on this. There is no moral excuse for exporting to >others what one won't consume on the domestic market.
What we won't consume is often perfectly fine. I remember when we refused to eat tuna because of mercury contamination, it was all shipped to England where it was no doubt consumed with glee. I should mention that 99.999% of ocean mercury is natural. (Also, if we dropped all our nuclear waste in the deep ocean trenches, 99.999% of ocean radioactivity would be natural). Americans are a funny lot. >It incensed me years ago to read about bad baby formula shipped to S. >America by US companies. >There is no less evil example of the excesses of capitalism than this >practice. Talk about creating bad images overseas. I can't remember the details, but again something we would refuse might be elixir to poor people in South America. A friend of mine lives out of the dumpsters at the back of Supermarkets. My wife used to stop him putting the stuff in our refrigerator when he stopped by. The dumped food is actually perfectly all right. Eggs with something spilled on the container. Vegetables which look a little tacky, but are otherwise perfectly edible (strip off the outside leaves) . Bottles and jars of stuff that isn't touched by the poor condition of its container. Dented cans (never buy a dented can) the contents of which are fine. All thrown out because Americans wouldn't accept them. I should add that he is probably close to being a millionaire. Food we wouldn't accept is more than adequate for most other peoples. There is a constituency that is against providing poor people overseas with canned baby food. Maybe that was an issue. I remember the NRDC boasting it only cost them $10,000 to flood TV and radio stations across the country with propaganda about Alar. It nearly ruined the apple producers and was completely unfounded. But people get scared - perhaps because of lack of education. Although I recall after Mad Cow became an issue in England, many people stopped buying meat. Sainsburys put their meat on sale for half price. Their shelves emptied. >Walk the talk, eat your own food. Either practice free (and fair) markets, >or admit it's fixed. Free markets are by definition fair markets. The person in charge is the consumer - which is every one of us. A "fair" market usually is bad for consumers, bad for overseas suppliers who are trying to make a living - very good for homegrown corporations who can jack up prices. Higher prices allow the corporation to pay a useful bribe to our favorite neighborhood politicians. >However, it will be increasingly difficult or impossible to distinguish >between GM crops and others due to cross-pollination in the wind, as the >story I posted mentioned, or the mixing of the two crops in the same grain >silos before shipping to market. Perhaps we will be able to distinguish between them by the increased fatalities and illnesses. I've been through this several times in which political pressure is much more important than science. >No wonder Farmer's Markets are thriving again. A little expensive, but generally very nice stuff. Be glad that the free market is still able to function in some instances. What the free market does is offer the consumer choice. It makes the cake bigger, as do machines, inventions, new techniques, and suchlike. The free market does not distribute the wealth that is produced. That is accomplished by other means. It's why we have poor and homeless people. But that's another story. Harry ****************************** Harry Pollard Henry George School of LA Box 655 Tujunga CA 91042 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (818) 352-4141 Fax: (818) 353-2242 *******************************
