14 DAY TRIAL // A director of the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned that big food companies and large agricultural producers are currently blocking reforms that would improve food production, human health, and the environment.
The official explains that these corporations spend millions of dollars yearly on lobby groups, which then go on to press governments, and bodies such as FAO and the UN, into not taking action where improvements could be made.
This is done solely for the purpose of profit, UN officials say. As such, the international body is crippled by bureaucracy, and stopped legally from helping millions of people living in poverty.
Environmentalists have been saying for a long time that the big agri-business and food producers have too much power over political decisions, but thus far no one listened.
Maybe now, that the accusations come from the director of the FAO Animal Production and Health Division FAO, Dr Samuel C. Jutzi, more people will start to open their eyes to this problem.
The official explained recently in London, UK, that the agricultural industry and the food production industry are the largest consumers of fresh water, some of the world's most important polluters, the largest threat to biodiversity, and the main reason why obesity exists today as an epidemic.
Regardless of these negative effects they have on the world, corporations in these fields are allowed to get away with what they do simply because they have enough money to stifle the legislative and decision-making processes.
The main mechanism of action that lobby groups use is the delay. Some norms have been jammed in various institution for years, while companies that would have been affected by them continue to thrive.
They also prefer to “water down” proposed decisions, which means that they eliminate the points that would do most good to the world, and most harm to their quarterly profits.
These groups are also successful because FAO's decision-making process is based on consensus. If two or three governments are persuaded not to vote for a measure, the decision is abandoned.
“I have now been 20 years in a multilateral organization which tries to develop guidance and codes for good agricultural practice, but the real, true issues are not being addressed by the political process because of the influence of lobbyists, of the true powerful entities,” Jutzi said.
He was speaking at the 2010 Compassion in World Farming annual lecture. “Many of us tend to lose hope in this process as we go on, and as we make only very small steps towards the objectives,” he added.
The official said that throughout the years, whenever FAO wanted to implement measures to regulate the livestock sector, or improve farming practices, lobby groups would persuade governments to oppose the process.
They did so by convincing politicians to ask for more reports, more evidence, when the amount of prrof that had been brought to support the proposals was overwhelming.
“We ran into very serious problems: that’s where we noted that the economic interests of the lobbyists have [worked] in the background so certain governments would come up with strict opposition, really strict opposition,” Jutzi said at the meeting.
Speaking to The Guardian, the official said that not all food corporations were involved in the process of obstructing FAO's work.
“We know that some of the private sector companies are more progressive than some of the politicians from countries which [have] major livestock interests,” he said for the newspaper.
“Organizations like Compassion in World Farming engage in dialogue with the FAO – and other international agencies,” explains the director of public affairs at CIWF, Joyce d'Silva.
“However our funds are limited and cannot hope to match those of the major agribusiness companies or the budgets of governments which are hostile to, for example, further improvements to animal welfare guidance from these agencies,” she goes on to say.
The expert also added that she found it absolute horrifying that “the narrow interests of certain commercial sectors can have more influence than organizations which represent the values and aspirations of millions of citizens.”
Further details of the lobby industry and the corporations behind it can be found at Our World.