Food price inflation: Global and national problem: THE Asian Development Bank has come up with an analysis that from June 2010 to February 2011, global food prices increased by 40.4%. In January 2011, the benchmark index for food prices of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations exceeded the steepest price level on record in 2008. The index went up by 28.4% during the month compared to the level a year ago. Food prices continued to climb in February, recording a year-on-year increase of 34.2%. According to FAO, both the demand side and the supply side factors are responsible for the rising trend of global food prices. Demand-side factors include a growing world population, strong income growth in emerging economies, and changing diets away from staple foods towards increased consumption of meats and processed foods that require much larger proportions of food as feedstock and inputs. On the other side, the supply-side factors include competing use of food grains, especially corn and rapeseed oil, to produce bio-fuel, urbanisation and diversion of agricultural land for commercial purposes, increasing scarcity of fresh water for irrigation, low crop yields, rising input costs, and neglect of investment in agricultural technology, infrastructure, processing facilities, and agriculture research and development (ADB, 2011).
Food adulteration rings alarm bell: Food adulteration with poisonous chemicals has reached a dangerous proportion posing serious health hazards in the country, said experts and government officials yesterday at a discussion jointly organised by The Daily Star and non-government development organisation RDRS Bangladesh. Basic food items on the market like rice, fish, fruits, vegetables, and sweetmeats are adulterated with hazardous chemicals in an indiscriminate manner, though food-grade preservatives and colours can be safely used in permissible quantities, said the discussants. The discussion on “Hazards of Food Contamination in National Life: Way Forward” was held at The Daily Star Centre in the capital. Views about the proportion of adulterated food items on the market varied between 70 and 90 percent. RDRS put the proportion at more than 90 percent referring to test results of government laboratories published in newspapers, while the officials and researchers present at the discussion said it is 70 percent.
2/3 of foods not certified: In absence of a national food control system, two-thirds of the total food items hit the market without any quality check, according to facts revealed at a discussion organised by The Daily Star and RDRS Bangladesh yesterday. Some 150 food items that include everything from rice to fish, vegetable to meat and from edible oil to baby food are available on the market. But Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI), the sole quality certification authority in the country, is mandated to monitor only 60 packaged items. Rules do not permit BSTI to check any unpackaged food items such as fruits, vegetables, meat and fish. “We’re all taking poison every day,” Capt (retd) Mujibur Rahman Fakir, state minister for health and family welfare, told the discussion titled “Hazard of Food Contamination in National Life.”
