Briefing

Food

From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

People in Britain spend £40.88 billion every year on shopping and £6 billion on eating out. One in seven of all workers now work in the food industry and in cafés and supermarkets.
Out of the top 15 European food companies, 12 are British. They are worth a total of £20 billion. The third biggest British company is United Biscuits. Since 1979 United Biscuits has given £1,044,500 to the Tory Party.
Britain’s biggest food manufacturer and retailer is Marks and Spencer which is three times bigger in market value than British Airways. Sainsbury is worth twice as much in market value as British Airways. The owner of Sainsbury, David Sainsbury, is Britain’s richest man. The Dutch/British conglomerate Unilever is bigger than Ford, Pepsi and Walt Disney.
A full 60 percent of Britain’s confectionery market is controlled by Rowntree, Cadbury and Mars. Savoury snacks are controlled by PepsiCo, United Biscuits and Golden Wonder which share 70 percent of the market. Unilever (Birds Eye), United Biscuits (Ross) and Nestlé (Findus) account for 50 percent of the frozen food market. Campbell’s and Heinz have cooked themselves up a 71 percent stake in the UK soup market. Heinz executive Tony O’Reilly ‘earned’ himself a whacking £50 million in salary, bonuses and share options in 1992!
The food industry currently spends £605 million on television advertising. This accounts for more than half of all advertising – four out of five products advertised are high fat and high sugar products. Yet in 1990 the Health Education Authority was given only £1 million for a new nutrition and dental programme. The Ministry of Agriculture spent only £200,000 on food education.
Procter and Gamble was hoping to market food substitute Olestra with a market value of almost £1 billion. However, the Centre for Science in the Public Interest found that, even when they used the manufacturer’s own research, Olestra could be a health threat and could cause liver damage.
We are constantly being encouraged to eat more healthily. Between 1982 and 1986 the price of food recommended for healthy eating went up. The price of fish went up 37 percent, fruit 32 percent and poultry 26 percent. In the same period the price of butter rose by only 9 percent and sugar by 13 percent.
Over the last 30 years we are eating less red meat like beef and mutton and we consume more fish and poultry. However, greater demand has led to short cuts in producing such food. For example, up to 60 percent of chickens are contaminated with salmonella. The number of people who die from food poisoning around the world is estimated to be 1 million a year – 3,000 a day. The number of cases of food poisoning in Britain has tripled since 1981.
We are also encouraged to eat more fruit and vegetables but the drive for profits means that more and more pesticides are used to cut down labour costs and give bigger crop yields. For example, 7 to 10 percent of apples are sprayed with pesticide AHAR. It has been withdrawn in the US by its manufacturer, Uniroyal, because it has been linked with tumours in children.
The United Nations has a watchdog, CODEX, which oversees standards and the labelling of food products. Out of 2,598 participants at its various meetings in 1993, 660 were from the food industry and only two were representatives of consumer groups. There were 105 delegations sent by national governments. The food company Nestlé sent more delegates than each of 85 countries.
The food industry proves there is no free market. Thailand is one of the biggest exporters of rice. The US is its biggest rival in the rice market. In 1986 the US decided to subsidise its rice producers to the tune of $800 million. The price of rice fell dramatically and as a result the amount Thailand earned from rice exports fell by 20 percent. The government of Thailand was forced, after demonstrations by its farmers – who were starving – to subsidise its own rice industry.
Around 40,000 people die every day from not having enough food to eat, but 56 percent of the world’s usable farming land lies unused. This would be enough to feed ten to 12 times the earth’s present population. Six multinational companies control 90 percent of all grain shipped in the world.

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