We get the food system we deserve because at the end of the day we prefer having choice and cheap prices at the point of purchase to the alternative of fewer options but fairer pay for all, good animal husbandry and an agricultural sector that maintains the soil for future generations rather than chasing higher short-term yields.
ReadRulers, wrote the Roman poet Juvenal, survive by providing the people with bread and circuses. His observation has acquired a twisted relevance in recent years. Brexit has become a political circus without the laughs while the duty to provide bread has become criminally neglected. These two aberrations are deeply connected.
ReadRosmaund Young’s The Secret Life of Cows made me think of how Hume did not so much elevate the animals to the supposed level of humans as claim that much human “reasoning” is no more rational than that of other animals.
Read“UK plc” has become part of the ordinary lexicon. If anyone finds it objectionable, few say so. No one announced that from now on we should conceive of our country as a business, but gradually, imperceptibly, it became natural to do so. This is how so many cultural shifts happen. Ways of thinking mutate gradually, helped by changes in vocabulary that we accept without question.
ReadLittle of significance has changed since the scandal because the truth is that it was the almost inevitable consequence of a flawed food system, not just a failing of one small part of it. The nub of the problem is that farm produce is now more often a commodity sold on price than it is a product bought for its distinctive value.
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