Mobile phones more dangerous than smoking or asbestos

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

And what about the latest mozzarella's dioxin scandal?

What was that?

The Mafia have been dumping toxic waste in the sea off Naples, where the best mozzarella comes from. No one stops them, of course. Some of it has got back into the food chain and into the cheese.

MG

PS the biggest producer of inauthentic mozzarella in Europe is a firm on Anglesey - so buy the cheap stuff and you'll be quite safe; Anglesey only has a lake of copper (pretty blue colour), but copper's good for you, except when he feels your collar

[sidewinder]

Good job I don't often eat Italian Mozarella. I'll watch out for the cheap Welsh imports.

[porcy62]

IMHO global market and science are out of control, I mean that citizens have no longer the informations, ergo, we are going towards a undemocratic world.

I tell you a story about junk food, a well known italian potato chip brand.

The potatoes grown in Westfalia, Germany, loaded on trucks, reach Sicily, Italy, where they are cleaned and dryied, then loaded on trucks back to Westafalia, where they are sliced, loaded on trucks toward Zurich, Switzerland, where they are fried, loaded on trucks reach Genoa, Italy, where they are packed, loaded on trucks towards markets.

I have no doubt that all this long travelling is more profitable for the company then producing potato chips in one place, I am just asking myself: who will pay the social costs of this process: hundreds of trucks on the road with car accidents, cancers because of pollution, etc?

Tax payers cover the cost for the NHS, road mainteinance, etc.

But yes, I could buy stocks of the company and get rich, until the next oil or subprime crisis and I have my cheap potato chips at the market.

Let's face it: this system should be changed, it can't last forever.

Sounds like an extremely complex process. I can see trucking in the potatoes, but after that I don't understand the need for the rest of what you described.

I can't imagine this being profitable at all.

That's exactly the point, YOU, and I, can't imagine, the MARKET does.

Let's say that a food big corporate bought the small company. The cheapest potatoes come from Germany, until now maybe tomorrow they will come from Poland, the big corporate get money from EU developping funds for poor areas, like Sicily, or maybe they have some lower taxation, or the job is cheaper, or the laws aginst pollution are looser. So they move the drying process of all their potato chips brands over there. Let's make the same reasoning for every places I named. Maybe in Switzerland they have the best, modern and economic frying plants of the whole europe, maybe they want that the italian chips remain italian, so they packed them in Italy and wrote down on the packet "Made in Italy", and charged you 50 cents more at the supermarket for it. Add the fact that most of the companies has lower transportation costs because they don't own their trucks anymore, they rent them. Then you can do some calculations: for a small company all these would be crazy, but for a big corporate with dozens of potato chips brands?

This is the concept of delocalization, if you consider more complex products like cars or DVD players, you'll discover that inside a Cadillac, proudly U.S. made, or in a Fiat FWIW, there are hundreds of parts coming from all over the world, the same plants does brakes for both Cadillac and Fiat, perhaps in Taiwan.

We moved from a small world with industrial areas where all the third parts were produced to a global world.

The point is that in order to move all this stuff we need way too much oil for trains, trucks, ships, and the long term social cost could be unbareable for us: global warming, desertification, pollutions, etc.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

IMHO global market and science are out of control, I mean that citizens have no longer the informations, ergo, we are going towards a undemocratic world.

I tell you a story about junk food, a well known italian potato chip brand.

The potatoes grown in Westfalia, Germany, loaded on trucks, reach Sicily, Italy, where they are cleaned and dryied, then loaded on trucks back to Westafalia, where they are sliced, loaded on trucks toward Zurich, Switzerland, where they are fried, loaded on trucks reach Genoa, Italy, where they are packed, loaded on trucks towards markets.

I have no doubt that all this long travelling is more profitable for the company then producing potato chips in one place, I am just asking myself: who will pay the social costs of this process: hundreds of trucks on the road with car accidents, cancers because of pollution, etc?

Tax payers cover the cost for the NHS, road mainteinance, etc.

But yes, I could buy stocks of the company and get rich, until the next oil or subprime crisis and I have my cheap potato chips at the market.

Let's face it: this system should be changed, it can't last forever.

Sounds like an extremely complex process. I can see trucking in the potatoes, but after that I don't understand the need for the rest of what you described.

I can't imagine this being profitable at all.

That's exactly the point, YOU, and I, can't imagine, the MARKET does.

Let's say that a food big corporate bought the small company. The cheapest potatoes come from Germany, until now maybe tomorrow they will come from Poland, the big corporate get money from EU developping funds for poor areas, like Sicily, or maybe they have some lower taxation, or the job is cheaper, or the laws aginst pollution are looser. So they move the drying process of all their potato chips brands over there. Let's make the same reasoning for every places I named. Maybe in Switzerland they have the best, modern and economic frying plants of the whole europe, maybe they want that the italian chips remain italian, so they packed them in Italy and wrote down on the packet "Made in Italy", and charged you 50 cents more at the supermarket for it. Add the fact that most of the companies has lower transportation costs because they don't own their trucks anymore, they rent them. Then you can do some calculations: for a small company all these would be crazy, but for a big corporate with dozens of potato chips brands?

This is the concept of delocalization, if you consider more complex products like cars or DVD players, you'll discover that inside a Cadillac, proudly U.S. made, or in a Fiat FWIW, there are hundreds of parts coming from all over the world, the same plants does brakes for both Cadillac and Fiat, perhaps in Taiwan.

We moved from a small world with industrial areas where all the third parts were produced to a global world.

The point is that in order to move all this stuff we need way too much oil for trains, trucks, ships, and the long term social cost could be unbareable for us: global warming, desertification, pollutions, etc.

Absolutely right, on every point, Porcy!

MG