dumping @#$%@#$ on Asia

Killing Me Softly

By Aziz Choudry

Why is it that whenever I think
of the Pacific, the word
?dumping? comes to mind?

The US Defense Threat Reduction
Agency plans to bury and cover
tens of thousands
of cubic yards of radioactive
waste on Johnson Atoll in the
Marshall Islands. The
Solomon Islands Government has
approved a deal to import and
dump three million
tons of toxic industrial waste
from Taiwan containing mercury,
arsenic and lead.

It is reportedly negotiating to
store Taiwanese nuclear waste,
too. Australia?s recent
federal budget brazenly
envisions continued use of Nauru
and Papua New Guinea
(PNG) to dump and imprison
people seeking asylum in
Australia.

Last month, a walk to a
foodstore in Suva, Fiji?s
capital, crammed with packets of
instant noodles, cans of corned
beef, tinned fish, biscuits,
soft drinks, chocolate bars
and potato chips - all imported
- vividly illustrated another
kind of dumping.

It reminded me of a striking
paradox of my visit to Pohnpei,
Federated States of
Micronesia (FSM) four years ago.
There I was fed greasy takeaway
food and soda while
marvelling at this lush tropical
island with its abundant
tropical fruit trees, in an
ocean teeming with fish.

Disease and death from
noncommunicable disease are on
the menu in many Pacific
Island countries, thanks to the
consumption of cheap, poor
quality imported
foodstuffs.

This menu often includes turkey
tails from the US (fat-saturated
bits of gristle and skin
that used to go into petfood);
lamb and mutton flaps from
Australia and New Zealand
(the loose bit from the end of a
chop - previously processed into
?blood and bone?
fertiliser); and chicken frames
(chicken carcasses after the
meat has been stripped from
them).

Imported white rice and flour
are gradually replacing the
local staples of taro, yams,
breadfruit and sweet potato.
Sugary, fatty processed foods
are destroying Pacific
communities and devastating
economies.

Paul Zimmet, director of the
International Diabetes Institute
in Melbourne says: ?What
AIDS was in the last 20 years of
the 20th century, diabetes is
going to be in the first
20 years of this century. It is
wiping out Nauru, the Marshall
Islands, Tonga. Name any
island, and diabetes is its main
health threat.?

?Dietary genocide might be a bit
extreme but people are literally
eating themselves to
death?, comments Auckland
University School of Medicine
epidemiologist Rod
Jackson.

In FSM, cardiovascular disease
is soaring, diabetes rife, and
vitamin A deficiency is
leading to blindness and chest
problems in many cases. In
Kosrae state, 90% of adult
surgical admissions are
diabetes-related. Often men and
women have their first heart
attack in their late twenties.

40-45% of Nauruans are diabetic,
with children as young as 10
being afflicted with
diabetes.

Fiji is the lone Pacific Island
member of the Cairns Group of
agricultural exporting
countries which lobbies for free
trade in agricultural products.
Despite its fertile
farmlands and large fisheries
zone, over half of its food is
imported. Cardiovascular
diseases, cancer, hypertension,
obesity and diabetes are
increasing.

Some call this ?New World
Syndrome? - diseases and medical
conditions brought on
by the impact of rapid
Westernisation on traditional
cultures.

Pacific lifestyles and diets
have been under assault since
colonisation. In much of the
region, fish, fresh fruit and
vegetables compri
comprise the traditional food
sources. Yet
people?s tastes have been
manipulated away from local,
healthier options.

Vili A. Fuavao, UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
regional representative,
says ?some islands people are
being led to believe that
imported processed foods are
more nutritious. They sell local
vegetables just to buy junk
foods and we end up with
health problems. We may not be
facing food shortage. But much
of what we eat causes
health problems.?

Urbanisation and pressures to
move from subsistence to cash
economies have taken a
toll on traditional forms of
food production. Rising poverty
levels are linked to
increasing dependence on the
cash economy and economic
reforms. Most Pacific
nations are in trade deficit in
foodstuffs and therefore
dependent on food imports.

With these changes, people eat
less well and exercise far less.
Pressures to further
integrate with the ?global free
market economy? will only worsen
and lock in this silent
epidemic.

Obesity among Pacific Islanders
costs New Zealand so much in
unpaid dialysis bills that
health authorities are
considering limiting access to
hospitals by overseas Pacific
Islanders. Island medical
resources are struggling
desperately to cope.

Last year Pacific islands
imported nearly 28000 tonnes of
New Zealand lamb, and
around 3000 tonnes of mutton.
Lamb and mutton flaps made up
about 35% of these
quantities. PNG imports mainly
Australian mutton flaps, while
NZ supplies the Western
Pacific.

Samoa?s health minister,
Mulitalo Siafausa Vui describes
the turkey tails and mutton
flaps widely available to most
Samoans as ?junk food dumped by
richer countries on
poorer countries.?

Many Pacific island governments
have been trying to promote
healthier, traditional
diets. The FAO and some aid
programmes have targeted support
for local food
production.

Lack of support for domestic
production is a common problem.
PNG?s government
started projects to improve and
promote local food production
but insufficient funding
was allocated to provincial
governments to implement them.

Former Vanuatu PM Barak Sope
declared 2001 to be Yia Blong
Aelan Kakae - the year
of island food. He said that
Vanuatu ?cannot accept being a
dumping ground for food
that has very low nutritional
value? and which contributes to
the high incidence of fatal
diseases like diabetes, high
blood pressure and cancer
suffered by ni-Vanuatu.

Fiji announced a ban on the
import of mutton or lamb flaps
from New Zealand because
of proven links to obesity. New
Zealand meat producers lashed
out. Refuting claims
that it was dumping fatty meat
on the region, Meat New Zealand
general manager,
trade policy, Gerry Thompson
called the ban ?a really highly
undesirable precedent in
international trade.? The
Consumer Council of Fiji warned
that the onus was on Fiji (a
WTO member) to provide
scientific proof about tthe
health effects of lamb flaps or
else

New Zealand and Australia might
lodge a WTO complaint against
it.

Tonga called on New Zealand
earlier this year to end its
exports of mutton flaps and
other fatty meats in a bid to
encourage Pacific Islanders to
return to traditional diets of
fish and vegetables.

Samoa?s Health Department is
preparing a submission to its
parliament on the impact
of imported fatty foods on
people?s health. Samoa?s Prime
Minister Tuilaepa Sailele
Malielagaoi, speaking at last
month?s World Food Summit in
Rome said that ?the
lowering of trade barriers has
resulted in an influx of
inferior food imports? which ?is
having an impact on the health
of lower-income families?.

Who exactly benefits from the
forced dependency on imported,
poor quality food?
Who benefits from the
manipulation of taste to
preferring imported items to
what is
locally available? From the
devaluing of traditional foods?
Pacific markets may be tiny
on a world scale, but markets
they remain, especially for
Australia and New Zealand
exporters.

The same Pacific Rim governments
which have enthusiastically
exported economic
reforms, trade liberalisation
and public sector downsizing to
the Pacific Islands merely
urge those cash-strapped
governments to implement more
health education to address
these problems. Meanwhile,
Pacific nations are told to
export more to earn more
foreign exchange and repay
loans, while commodity prices on
world markets have
plummeted.

Governments like New Zealand and
Australia adamantly oppose trade
restrictions being
used for public health purposes.
Responding to Tonga?s call on
his government, New
Zealand Samoan MP Taito Philip
Field sided with the New Zealand
meat industry.
?There is a freedom of business
and trade?, he said. New Zealand
would not
?interfere?with what Tongan
business people decide to buy
into Tonga.?

What purpose do aid programmes
serve when donor governments
pursue and promote
trade and economic policies
which further undermine the
health of Pacific peoples?

As part of the Africa Caribbean
Pacific (ACP) grouping, Pacific
governments are about
to enter into trade negotiations
with the European Union to
conclude ?economic
partnership? agreements - free
trade deals compatible with WTO
rules.

The EU expects this to lead to
the duty free import of
substantially all EU goods into
ACP countries within a ten year
period. The start of these
negotiations in September
will in turn trigger talks
towards a free trade deal
between Pacific Island countries
and

Australia and New Zealand under
the Pacific Agreement on Closer
Economic Relations

(PACER).

The deluge of imported food and
disease can only increase.
Meanwhile, the range of
policy options available to
Pacific Island governments to
address these problems is
shrinking rapidly as they commit
to further market reforms and
trade liberalisation.

A
2001 World Health Organisation
report, ?Globalisation, diet and
health: an example
from Tonga? states: ?Although
educational programmes have
increased awareness
about healthy diets and
nutritional foods, people in the
Pacific nonetheless choose to
consume less-healthy foods
because of cost and availability
(i.e they make economically
rational, but nutritionally
detrimental, decisions to
consume certain foods).

Thus, poor diet is not simply a
health or health education
issue, it is also economic.?
Local, healthier low-fat sources
of protein like fish cost 15-50%
more than mutton
flaps and imported chicken and
in many areas of Tonga is less
easily purchased. Bread
and rice are cheaper and more
accessible than taro.

The report draws links between
the dependence on imported
foods, diet-related
disease, ?development? and trade
liberalisation. It warns that
Tonga?s accession to the
WTO may seriously limit its
ability to enact policy
promoting local people?s health
by using tariffs or bans on certain
foodstuffs. Trade liberalisation
is also likely to continue
to erode the viability of
developing domestic food
production through increased
competition, it concluded.

A
1999 FAO study considered the
impacts of implementing the GATT
Uruguay Round in
16 developing countries
(including Fiji). It showed that
food imports had risen much
faster than exports, and that
import surges in particular
products (notably dairy
products - especially milk
powder - and meat products -
mostly poultry) were a common
experience.

Competition from food imports
had the effect of undermining
local (food) production,
driving smaller producers out of
business, while reduced domestic
support to farmers in
line with trade liberalisation
measures made it difficult for
farmers interested in
production for export to take
advantage of supposedly expanded
market access.

Last month, the New Zealand
government formally apologised
to Samoa for injustices
and blunders committed during
its colonial administration. In
1918, New Zealand
authorities allowed the SS
Talune, carrying passengers
suffering from influenza to
berth at Apia. This led to an epidemic
which wiped out around 22% of
the island?s
population. A 1948 UN study
dubbed it ?one of the most
disastrous epidemics
recorded anywhere in the world
during the present century.?

Thanks to the foodstuffs which
New Zealand and other countries
still sell to the region,
Pacific peoples are dying as
surely as the thousands of
Samoans who died in 1918.

And the economic policies that
they continue to help impose on
the region represent
more nails in more coffins
throughout the Pacific. New
Zealand?s apology rings hollow
while such governments refuse to
take their share of
responsibility for causing this
modern-day health disaster.

> People around here can buy vegetables and such from the farmers
markets for
> far less than the junk food they are buying. But they don't. It's
mainly old
> retired farmers and such over 60 who shop at the farmers market.
Young
> people are never there.

Up here in new hampshire the retired folk take their social security
check to the liqour store and stock up on whiskey, then off to
Walmart where they get bags of frozen fried chicken.

So when they aren't bombed and chowing down, they are going to doctor
apointments or talking about how many and much medication they are
taking.

and the youngsters are no better.

why people eat most of the processed stuff is beyond me. perhaps, all
that soda pop and candy ( "kidde heroin" ), along with endless media
conditioning, and people become too inert to spend a few extra
minuetes fixing real food.

best, buzzy^