PEOPLE, PLANET, PROSPERITY, THE FOOD CHAIN AND DECENT REGULATIONS

摘要

The world has over 7 billion people and they all want to be happy, having enough to eat, have families and prosper. Fornumerous reasons, when the numbers were much lower and this would have been possible, it did not happen. There hasalways been a big gap between the fortunate (relatively) few and those living in poverty. Now that it might becomepossible, it looks very much like the planet cannot sustain these numbers. The gap is still there, possibly even increasingand hunger is rising, not diminishing. To attend to the wealthy part of the world, the food chain has become absurd,often involving the transport of raw materials from the most distant places to processing plants and then pack theproduct to be transported back to the most distant places again. Food safety regulations among countries differ to theextent that healthy food is legally destroyed, depriving desperate populations their basic needs. Such regulations arenot based on sound science but on media hypes or lobbying by powerful stakeholders. Members of the scientificcommunity, including technologists, engineers and nutritionists, in cooperation with regulatory specialists are workingtogether to remove the regulatory hurdles to food security.