Hi Delegates!
I’ve been receiving many of your position papers. Congrats to the ones who finished early! Just a friendly reminder for the rest of you that the deadline for position papers are coming up; they should be postmarked by this Saturday, March 1st.
Also, hope you are all following the issues of food safety as well as intellectual property closely. As many of you may know, there has been a problem with beef recently in schools, leading to continued concerns about food safety. As you read the news, think about these questions: how does an incident like this relate to the world on a larger scale? With world trade being so integrated, how could this incident mount into a crisis, and how should countries continue to pursue free trade while ensuring the safety of their food?
Just a few thoughts. Again, feel free to introduce yourself or ask questions, as delegates who post will be noticed.
Good luck wrapping up your papers, and remember to cite your sources in MLA or APA format!
- Cindy
February 29th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Hey Cindy,
My name is Lindsay… Me and AJ are really excited for your conference!
In response to your question:
With world trade being so integrated, and more food coming from a few places, the risk of a crisis is much greater than in the past. The recent 2008 recall of Westland Meat Company beef was confined to the US, but many companies export internationally. A global recall would be much more difficult, and the chance of contaminated products reaching unsuspecting consumers is much higher.
For example, Brazil supplies 23% of the world’s coffee. If Brazilian coffee became contaminated somehow, their exports could be all over the world before any signs of contamination were shown.
And as for how to solve this…. China handles the possibility of a crisis with a thorough import inspection program run by our Ministry of Health; this could work for other countries as well.
See you at the conference! -Lindsay
March 5th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Well, something to think about when we are putting our agreement together is to consider food vendors.
I mean, in one region of South Africa alone, we can spend 44.7M Rand just on street vendors selling food.
In Europe and N. America, there is so many vendors, especially in the summer when tourist numbers are high. It’s amazing that we haven’t had a major crisis due to this yet, but I don’t think that we should just let it be and keep our fingers crossed hoping that a crisis of this sort breaks out.
Just something to think about.
March 10th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
With the world’s food supply so integrated, food safety is of course a global concern that links developing and developed nations. This is especially true considering that trade in high value, minimally processed food products have increased substantially. If there is a problem found with a supply of a certain product, there could be consequences for all the importing countries of that particular product especially if the exporting country does not possess the infrastructure to trace the product back to the original producer. This lack of infrastructure is very common in developing countries like China. Japan would like to emphasize the importance of establishing a method to trace food all the way up the supply chain. There are many difficulties like a fragmented food production system that need to be overcome in creating such a method, and Japan and China have recently “agreed to solve issues of common concern through technical negotiations through the end of March 2008″. Coincidentally, this example of bilateral solidarity extends to the desire to “strengthen cooperation on intellectual property rights”. Japan would like to emphasize it is committed in helping developing countries overcome these obstacles.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2007-12/03/content_6295447.htm