The true cost of food
The true cost of food must include the cost of protecting the food supply from further outbreaks of nastiness, and paying for the clean-up operations when they do occur
Have you been to the United Kingdom lately? You cannot escape the full page adverts in the quality (and otherwise) newspapers, billboards on roads into London, and television spots, all proclaiming a full-fledged price war among leading supermarket chains. Supermarket A has “1835 products cheaper than” Supermarket B, while Supermarket B has “975 products cheaper than” Supermarket A. If you really want to know who has the cheapest prices — so you can see for yourself “who has the smallest prices. Not just the biggest claims” — the ads tell you that “prices of up to 10,000 comparable products are independently checked at Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s every week and the results published online by an organization called Tesco.
The Gurdian’s Paul Levy argues that:
The truth is that cheap food is not cheap, but that we calculate the price of it incorrectly. We exclude from its retail price the cost to the NHS and employers of illness resulting from food-borne disease, and we exclude the cost of cleaning up the food supply after each episode of one of these modern plagues. We do pay these costs, but we take them from a different pocket. However you stash your cash, though, it’s all coming from the same wallet in the end.
Levy’s conclusion: We need to get used to the idea of paying the true cost of our food — which must include the cost of protecting the food supply from further outbreaks of nastiness, and paying for the clean-up operations when they do occur.
