Rival Meat Slicer 1101e

The dioxin scandal and we





The greed for cheap food made sure that the world's only in front of a food mixer fear.

By Hans Gmeiner

Yet another food scandal is for bolder headlines. And back in Germany. After cheating rotten meat and cheese now dioxin in food, eggs and possibly meat. And again the questions are there: What is what we as a day wrapped in plastic sheets in the supermarkets will be used as food? This meat, the milk, this cheese, the eggs of the supposedly "happy animals" as they appear on the packaging?

And again it's the same answers. It echauffiert about the modes of production laments the greed of the agricultural industry and castigates . politics Yes, like everywhere something to it. But: All these discussions are aimed in the wrong direction and fall short of any event in the dioxin scandal First, this is obviously a simple criminal case, the other is the industrial production of food... not per se bad or even dangerous.

The problem is the structures that emerged in recent years are. Big, bigger, even bigger had the food producers and processors-will, so the food cheap, cheaper, and still could be cheaper. All joined in, had to join. The trade, producers and processors, we consumers anyway. A vicious circle.

Metzger stayed by the wayside, bakers, millers and the merchant around the corner, the farmers anyway. And thus the safety net that protects us from the avalanche-like spread of the consequences of a scandal like the current one.

For only thus was possible that a single criminal cause food mixer from northern Germany was a loss, the very short time to visit the neighboring countries and even reached overseas. The market shares that hold these companies today are large, the quantities they implement huge, the distances over which they do business, far. And accordingly, there is damage when something is rotated or something happened.

Consumers can now protect themselves more. "Now Austria table" recommends that everywhere one now. This one is certainly on the better side. More and no. The recent food safety scares, crumbled one the Germans, an Austrian company. With Quargel. The cost eight lives.

Salzburger Nachrichten 11 January 2011 Page 1