La Marché de la Faim

It is Saturday afternoon. I have just been to see 'La Marché de la Faim' (We Feed the World) at the cinema on the quai d'Ourcq. Did I mention I live in Paris? Anyway, it was interesting although certain vocabulary was a little too advanced or specific for me to fully capture. Shocking images of cruelly cute newly hatched chicks, yellow, fluffy and lost being mass handled by factory arms and conveyer belts as they start their very short life. Scary interview with the CEO of Nestlé who described as 'extreme' the idea of some crazed individuals that water should be a human right. The resigned smiles of a Brazilian family who are starving because the government will only allow them to grow soya grains, which when it rains and the crops can be harvested they will gain a little money for, from the government, but otherwise, remains a crop they cannot eat or use. The mountains of two day old discarded loaves of bread in Vienna that amounts to enough bread to feed the second biggest city in Austria, but obviously doesn't.

I don't think the answer is to be utopic, imagining that one morning we could wake up and share out the food evenly, and forget about money. Nor, do I think that it is acceptable that we allow Nestlé and other companies who do not take their role seriously to hold the top economic spot. There must be a way out of this confused over production and this devasting famine, a way where companies have to behave as responsibly and as respectably as a citizen of a community.

Like every voter in an election our power as a consumer is not negliable, and the booming market for 'ethically friendly' products shows that people want to do something. But, with every box and tin claiming to help someone, how do we know who to trust? I think it's time for big restructuring of obligatory guildlines for companies to follow so that they either shape up or ship out (or don't as the case may be).