Nowhere is perhaps food hygiene abused more than in this part of the world. Maintenance of this particular hygiene is a prerequisite for food safety, public health and a nation's overall health status. The market of a country known mostly as a sellers' preserve is marked for many of its aberrations apart from atrocious price manipulation. It is hardly a competitive market where a high standard of food value is on offer at the minimum possible profit. The consumables are often prepared with low grade ingredients including colours used for industrial purposes. There is a whole range of other adulteration practices in the interest of business but at the risk of public health.
Food hygiene in its limited sense is its storing or preservation at home. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), there are five keys to the food manual. These are keeping food clean, separate storing of cooked and raw foods, cooking thoroughly, maintaining safe temperature for food and use of safe water and raw materials in food preparation. The emphasis here is understandably on storing foods preferably in refrigerator before preparation and eating. But it does not consider how agricultural produce is grown and the food industry prepares and packages before marketing.
So when Fisheries and Livestock Adviser Farida Akhter observes that the green revolution in the country's agriculture has turned into a gray revolution, her observation hits the right chord. She also made her opposition to contract farming known while she was speaking at a roundtable organised by the Research Initiatives, Bangladesh (RIB) with support from Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, an international alternative policy lobby group and non-profit institution for civic education. Those who are genuinely in favour of or work for protecting the interests of farmers, farm labourers, particularly for elimination of disparities between men and women in the sector, could not agree more. One of the most negative developments of contract farming with its poisonous impacts on the farming community and the environment is the cultivation of tobacco. Agriculture workers there are likely to turn into bonded labours.
Even though tobacco cultivation could not spread widely, the lure of profit of this harmful crop has drawn farmers of certain areas to it with the promise of higher profit. Leave alone this toxic crop, the whole gamut of agriculture has undergone a radical change over the years. Bangladesh has tripled its staple production within 45 years from 1971-2015. The world too has achieved the same feat but in between 1960 and 2015. Bangladesh's achievement looks still more impressive because it has been able to overcome its early limitation of growing paddy-only stance to diversify crop production of late. Farmers are no longer shy of growing exotic vegetables and fruits---once an unthinkable proposition. Today capsicum, broccoli, dragon fruit, strawberry, cashew nut and even date of the finest quality exclusive to the Arabian deserts are successfully grown here.
While these are enviable achievements on the part of the country's agricultural scientists and farmers, the same cannot be said about the agricultural practices and preservation of crops. It is sad that farmers could not be motivated enough to maintain the standard practices of applying chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Then come the middlemen and traders who procure the produce and use harmful agents to extend shelf life or ripen immature fruits collected for early marketing. Even if pesticide is applied at the recommended level, vegetables and fruits have to be left alone for a certain period before their harvesting.
The concerted effort on the part of the agriculture extension officers is missing in the matter of determining the exact amount of irrigation, proportionate use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. True, the tendency of 'the more it is the better' in application of fertilisers and pesticides has certainly been done away with but still a standard practice eludes most farmers. This is because, the kind of view exchange with groups of farmers of a particular area is not regularly held. More concerning is the fact that farmers apply pesticides in order to protect their crops from pests and insects but are not adequately motivated to give enough time for dissolution of impacts of those agents.
Thus both food hygiene and food safety are grossly compromised at the growing and marketing levels. If the middlemen and traders treat those--- fruits in particular which are eaten raw or without cooking--- with preservatives and ripening agents, the impacts can be incalculably harmful. Adviser Farida Akhter has hinted how people can catch non-communicable diseases like cancer after consumption of such foodstuffs. Indeed, physicians and health experts have long been warning that behind the high prevalence of cancer in the country lies the indiscriminate use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Farmers adopted the practice of advanced farming technology sans the hygiene and safe practices of growing foods.
They are hardly to blame for this. If they apply chemical agents without protective gears--- even without masks ---in their crop fields, it is clear they were not adequately informed and cautioned. Thus their awareness of health and hygiene has not been raised to the level where they can feel the empathy for the consumers of their produce. So the food hygiene and food safety are subjected to gross neglect.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
