By Mark Kinver Science and environment reporter, BBC News
A sustainable global food system in the 21st Century needs to be built on a series of “new fundamentals”, according to a leading food expert.
Tim Lang warned that the current system, designed in the 1940s, was showing “structural failures”, such as “astronomic” environmental costs.
The new approach needed to address key fundamentals like biodiversity, energy, water and urbanisation, he added.
Professor Lang is a member of the UK government’s newly formed Food Council.
“Essentially, what we are dealing with at the moment is a food system that was laid down in the 1940s,” he told BBC News.
“It followed on from the dust bowl in the US, the collapse of food production in Europe and starvation in Asia.
“At the time, there was clear evidence showing that there was a mismatch between producers and the need of consumers.”
Professor Lang, from City University, London, added that during the post-war period, food scientists and policymakers also thought increasing production would reduce the cost of food, while improving people’s diets and public health.
Continue reading Food needs ‘fundamental rethink’
By Amy Norton
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Many people may be surprised by the number of chemicals they are exposed to through everyday household products, a small study finds, suggesting, researchers say, that consumers need to learn more about sources of indoor pollution.
In interviews with 25 women who’d had their homes and bodies tested for various environmental pollutants, researchers found that most were surprised and perplexed by the number of chemicals to which they’d been exposed.
Continue reading Pollution at home often lurks unrecognized
My personal note related to this aricle :
Do read carefully and you’ll find already several countries not playing “the game”, several options to “escape” restrictions …. nice political talk but who will pay in the end ? The usual us ! I don’t mind paying more (to some point) to change our way of producing as long this “extra price” is wisely used to indeed change. If it is just to “please” ….. I don’t believe this kind of “imposed” rules will work. Companies’s goal is not health but profit … and pitty enough both options are not complementary at all. In my opinion it is us, consumers, that will have to “force” the producers by our way of consuming. If we refuse to buy products made via heavy polluted production … producers will have to adapt. Production will automatically follow demand. If a product is out of fashion … it’ll disappear. The big question is : how do we know how a product is made ? Did it follow an “alternative” production process or was it the usual maximum profit versus health line ? Maybe some leading enviromental groups should see into this and try to make lists of what is made how and give some kinda green label ???
By ROBERT WIELAARD and ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writers
BRUSSELS, Belgium – European nations on Friday dared the United States, Russia and China to follow their lead on global warming after agreeing on a plan to meet the so-called “20-20-20″ targets: reducing greenhouse emissions by 20 percent and ensuring that 20 percent of energy comes from wind, sun and other renewable sources by 2020.
But activists said the plan was fatally weakened by a raft of concessions to eastern Europe and heavy industry at a time of worldwide economic crisis.
Continue reading EU hails climate deal as example for the world …. what kind of example ?
A dirty brown haze sometimes more than a mile thick is darkening skies not only over vast areas of Asia, but also in the Middle East, southern Africa and the Amazon Basin, changing weather patterns around the world and threatening health and food supplies, the U.N. reported Thursday. The huge smog-like plumes, caused mainly [...]
Remeber the video’s I posted october 31th : Melamine may be in US food supply
Elections are finished and the BBC posts this little topic, almost lost in the jungle of news
US authorities have issued a nationwide “import alert” for Chinese-made food products in the wake of the melamine contamination scandal. The US [...]
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