Food scares are not going away – Paul French

No day passes by and China faces yet another food scare, sometimes spilling over into countries abroad. Despite all the attention, those food scares are here to stay, says retail analyst Paul French in The Telegraph.

The Telegraph:

The strains on the Chinese food system, coupled with weak regulation, have produced a series of food scares in the past few years, as the Chinese attempt to bulk up their produce.

“There are two types of food scare,” said Paul French, who has just authored a study on food scares for Mintel, a research company. “The first is malicious. They know what they are doing to make the food go a bit further, like adding melamine to milk or clenbuterol to pork.”

“The other is scares that occur when farmers use chemicals to grow their food which they do not really understand the effects of,” he said.

“Given that the number of people that are on the land is shrinking, and the amount of arable land is shrinking, they are going to have to move towards some sort of agribusiness. But then people want to maximise profits, because it is a business, and that is when you get the problems,” he added.

“The scares happen across so many categories of food, and they happen again and again and again.”

More in The Telegraph.

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