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Perspectives on the Treaty by Stakeholders in the World Food Chain
as mentioned above, the fact that we all live together on one planet, evident to us now thanks to globalization, but a fact since the dawn of time. Arguably the most important and positive result of globalization is that it has given us the perception of being part of a planet, certainty that our actions have consequences not only on our own lives and those of people around us, but also on the lives of the rest of humanity, even far away from us. Globalization helps us to understand that even when the price of our food respects the parameters of ecological economics and the social issues we have mentioned, it still has not done all its job: in this globalized world, consumption and production have consequences that also need to be taken into account.
The role of informed consumers in changing the rules Citizen-consumers can work towards an ethical market, assuming that ‘ethics’ deal with the individual behaviours and their consequences on the community. Philosopher Emmanuel Kant, in his fundamental law of pure practical reason stated: act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Which means: if the way you are going to behave could be bearable if everyone in the world did the same, than it is an ethical action. If it can be done only by one person it is not. The western countries are scared at the idea that China, India, Africa start consuming as much fuel, meat, water, as Europe, the USA and Japan are doing. ‘It would be unsustainable!’ they say. But they pretend not to see that the ‘unsustainability’ is already in their behaviours without considering developing countries. Through their choices, consumers can orient production, which follows their lead on the basis of pragmatic considerations of customer satisfaction, not necessarily of ethical correctness. Of course a condition exists to make the consumer fully able to modify the market in an ethical sense. That condition, as said, is information. ‘Good clean and fair food’ (Petrini, 2007) must be recognized by the consumer, hence information must be available and reliable, and the consumer must have enough food culture to decide which is the best food for the common good. The first piece of information that the consumer must have is that food cannot be cheap, because when the price of a food is too low, someone or something is being damaged: • •
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It can be cheap because it is of poor quality, hence harmful for the health of the consumer. It can be cheap because not all the production costs, such as social or environmental costs, have been considered and have remained hidden. Sooner or later someone (or all of us) will have to pay for this, maybe in a multiplied amount. It can be cheap because it is the product of subsidized agriculture, meaning that it has damaged other (far away) agricultures and economies.
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