Jamaican Till I Die!

Jamaica’s Food Security and safety depends on our integrity, morality, self-respect, respect for others, personal responsibility and basic human decency. We are simply at the mercy of each other, especially since our food supply system lacks a standard nationwide process to protect us. Anything can be injected into the food supply at any stage of the process and we would not know. When it comes to food import we have no control, we gave all control to the exporting country and we are totally at their mercy to eat what they want us to eat. BRASÍLIA, Brazil (AFP)  – Salmonella steaks? Carcinogenic chemicals? Lying labels? Brazil, the world's biggest beef and poultry exporter, has been hit by stomach-churning allegations of corrupt practices in its meat industry. Police have halted exports by 21 meat processers suspected of bribing inspectors to issue them bogus health certificates for rotten meat. Brazil's rotten meat scandal: what we know Jamaica's food security a s...

I am a massive advocate of the “Consume what you Produce and Produce what you Consume” principle, especially with regards to agricultural and food production. I think a country like Jamaica should get most of what it consumes from local sources and only import the things it needs, not want and that are required for the production process. This principle also affords us greater control over our food supply as it allows maximum control over the entire process from the farms to the processing plants and finally to our tables. Events taking place in the United Kingdom have only served to support my argument even more, the British woke up to find out that the beef they thought they were consuming was in fact horse meat and in some reports donkey meat have also entered the food chain. It also seemed that finding out what was in the food was the easy part but trying to locate the source or sources of the contamination was another matter altogether, they are still trying to follow that...