Profits before food . . . (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

In June a Danish MEP, Jens-Peter Bonde, put down a written question in the European Parliament to the Common Market Commissioner for Agriculture, asking him to state what proportion of fruit bought by the Common Market to maintain price levels “was distributed free of charge, processed to make alcohol, used as animal fodder or destroyed in 1983” and adding, “when does the Commission intend to stop destroying people’s food?”

In his reply the Commissioner, Poul Dalsager, tried to argue that no food had actually been destroyed; it was just that some of the food bought to maintain prices “became unfit for use” before it could be turned into alcohol or used in other ways. This is pure hypocrisy: the food was deliberately allowed to rot — destroyed — because as Dalsager went on to explain, “an increase in the number of possible uses cannot be achieved without the risk of interfering in the normal distribution channels or of distorting competition between the various commercial operators”. In other words, if too much is given away to hospitals and other institutions or used as animal fodder or turned into alcohol, the profits of food merchants, animal feed producers and other alcohol distillers would be threatened.

The figures quoted by Dalsager allow us to work out how much food was destroyed in the ten Common Market countries in the year 1982/83 (April to April). For comparison we also give the figures for the amount given away free as this very neatly illustrates capitalism's priorities.

Adam Buick