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

Abstract

The world has over 7 billion people and they all want to be happy, having enough to eat, have families and prosper. For numerous reasons, when the numbers were much lower and this would have been possible, it did not happen. There has always been a big gap between the fortunate (relatively) few and those living in poverty. Now that it might become possible, it looks very much like the planet cannot sustain these numbers. The gap is still there, possibly even increasing and 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 the product to be transported back to the most distant places again. Food safety regulations among countries differ to the extent that healthy food is legally destroyed, depriving desperate populations their basic needs. Such regulations are not based on sound science but on media hypes or lobbying by powerful stakeholders. Members of the scientific community, including technologists, engineers and nutritionists, in cooperation with regulatory specialists are working together to remove the regulatory hurdles to food security.