Journal of the World Public Health Nutrition Association
Published monthly at www.wphna.org/worldnutrition/
Editor’s note. Big Food Watch. on the cover of this issue of WN, is the topic of the commentary ‘Words for our sponsors’ that follows this Update section. The decision to include BFW as a regular feature in WN follows recommendations from Association members and colleagues, and responds to the Bellagio Declaration[
Sent with this ], ‘Countering Big Food’s Undermining of Healthy Food Policies’. All the contributions in this issue of Update are identified as from Big Food Watch. In future we plan to run series of BFW commentaries.
The big business band plays on
BIG FOOD WATCH
Access June 2011 WN editorial on food wars here
Access June 2011 WN Claudio Schuftan on food prices here
Access February 2013 The Lancet paper on Profits and Pandemics here
Claudio Schuftan of the People’s Health Movement reports:
Schmoozing and tooting for helpful government and big business: Klaus Schwab, the boss of the World Economic Forum (left, with Hosni Mubarac). WEF forecasts growth in inequity in 2014
Cognitive dissonance is the uneasy experience of holding] two or more contradictory beliefs at the same time. Attentive readers of the World Economic Forum Outlook on the Global Agenda 2014, published in late November, (1) who, along with most world leaders believe that global affairs now are improving, may suffer a severe attack of cognitive dissonance. Alternatively, those who believe that present trends point to an even deeper finance, food and fuel crash, may also feel acutely confused.
For, on the one hand, the Outlook report shows that the WEF is failing in its commitment to ‘improving the state of the world’. It states that inequity, instability and insecurity are booming. It emphasises, as noted by a news story (2) that: ‘Widening wealth disparity affects every part of our lives… [as it] impacts social stability within countries and threatens security on a global scale… Incredible wealth created over the last decade in the [United States] has gone to a smaller and smaller portion of the population, and the disparity stems from many of the same roots as in developing countries’. Further on it says: ‘Nearly two-thirds of US citizens think that the current economic system favours the wealthy. But in some European countries, where people are still recovering from the global economic crisis that has left thousands of people out of work, the percentage is much higher’.
No surprise in the above, except that inequity represents not just lack of money, it is a consequence of widespread injustice and oppression that affect all aspects of life, not just the ability to buy things.
Abu Dhabi (top), location of the 18-20 November 2013 meeting of the World Economic Forum at which its global agenda for 2014 was set. Klaus Schwab (above) at the opening plenary session
The WEF meeting held 18-20 November had the purpose to set, predict and confirm its 2014 agenda. It was held in Abu Dhabi. Klaus Schwab, the 1971 founder of the WEF and for long its executive director, is seen sitting (above left) with the hosts at the opening plenary session. Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, (top above), is said to be the richest city in the world, and has grown from 25,000 population in 1960 to its current 1,450,000, three-quarters of whom are foreign nationals. UAE nationals who live in Abu Dhabi, including the ruling families and their minions?, are said to have an average individual net personal worth of $US 17 million.
The ‘Top 10 Trends 2014’ specified in the Outlook report include eight depicted as problems that, altogether, seem almost apocalyptic. These 10, as well as ‘widening income disparities’, are: ‘rising societal tensions in the Middle East and North Africa’; ‘persistent structural unemployment’; ‘inaction on climate change’; ‘intensifying cyber threats’; ‘diminishing confidence in economic policies’; ‘a lack of values in leadership’; and ‘the rapid spread of misinformation online’. Only two of the ten are positioned as neutral. These are: ‘the growing importance of megacities’ and ‘the expanding middle class in Asia’. ‘Future Agendas’ highlighted are: ‘the future of shale gas’; ‘the future of the Arctic’; ‘the future of biotechnology’; ‘the future of digital intelligence’; and ‘the new space race’. Further ahead, are: ‘mapping the future’ and ‘the future of democracy’.
What about rising food and nutrition insecurity, the collapse of primary health care, and the displacement of traditional food systems by ultra-processed branded products? These trends are not in the report. For a reason why, see Box 1.
World Economic Forum Industry PartnersWEF ‘Industry Partners’ are, in the WEF’s words, ‘select member companies that are actively involved in the Forum’s mission at the industry level. With privileged access to the Forum’s multi-stakeholder networks and experts, this partnership brings visibility and insight to strategic decision-making on the most important industry and cross-industry related issues. This access and insight allows Industry Partners to contribute to leading positive change across these issues and to engage in action to support corporate global citizenship’. What ‘corporate global citizenship’ might mean is not explained.
The WEF ‘agriculture, food and beverage’ ‘Industry Partners’ are either manufacturers of ultra-processed food and drink products, or alcoholic drinks, or agrichemicals. They include Anheuser Busch-Inbev, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation*, Bunge, Cargill, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Du Pont, General Mills, Heineken, Mondelez. Monsanto, Nestlé, Pepsi-Co, SAB Miller, Syngenta, Unilever, and Yum! Brands. The list is illustrated with a nice picture (above) of a young Indian woman in a market selling oranges. None of these Industry Partners has headquarters in India (although the CEO of PepsiCo is an Indian national) and no business partner is from the primary production, fresh food or retailing sectors (unless agrichemical corporations and Yum! Brands are counted). *: The inclusion of the Bill andMelinda Gates Foundation may be because of its large shareholdings in Coca-Cola .
Who are ‘us’ and ‘we’?
The Outlook report states that masses of people all over the world are rising up in anger, but does not seriously try to explain why this is so. Instead, despite the appalling trends it outlines, the report is strangely optimistic. Thus Helene D. Gayle, the president and CEO of CARE USA, says: ‘In order to counteract income inequality, it is essential to tackle poverty in an integrated way that has long-term impact. We need to give people the capacity to be resilient, to take-on challenges and to learn the skills they need to work towards more prosperous futures. We should also look broadly at social inequalities’. These remarks stop short of saying anything meaningful.
Martina Gmür, head of the WEF ‘network of global agenda councils’, and Drew Gilpin Faust, the Harvard president, see hope and light?? ahead. Meanwhile (right) the street fighting continues
Martina Gmür (above, left), a former Nestlé marketing executive, is head of the WEF network of global agenda councils. Introducing the Outlook report she says: ‘Our experts overwhelmingly agreed that rising societal tensions in the Middle East and North Africa will be the defining trend of 2014, alongside increasing inequality and unemployment. Respondents also showed their dissatisfaction with the state of global co-operation on major challenges such as climate change, youth unemployment and poverty’. She is also curiously upbeat. ‘On a brighter note, they were optimistic about the future and about mankind’s ability to address emerging issues in biotechnology, surveillance, energy security and a host of other issues’.
Historian Drew Gilpin Faust (above, middle) is president of Harvard, following the resignation in 2006 of economist Lawrence Summers (who as a member of the Clinton administration helped to deregulate the banking industry and thus to create casino capitalism). She says as published in the Outlook report: ‘The increasingly interconnected nature of the world’s most pressing problems demands new approaches to the development of solutions. Traditional intellectual fields are shifting and converging in order to answer the complex questions facing our globalised society, just as organisations such as the World Economic Forum… are bringing together thought leaders from across a wide range of disciplines to provide new perspectives on our greatest opportunities. As we look ahead, we have to be optimistic that this growing spirit of collaboration across disciplines and across borders will enable us to meet the challenges of 2014’. What these warm words mean is anybody’s guess.
But who in the Outlook report are ‘we’ and ‘us’? Apparently, these are the people who participate in WEF meetings usually held in Davos, Switzerland, and especially ‘our experts’. Mostly, these are wealthy white middle-aged men from high-income countries and settings, who are well-fed, can afford health care, and live in healthy surroundings. Samuel Huntington, who invented the term ‘Davos Man’, says that they typically ‘have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the élite’s global operations’.
That is to say, the overwhelming bias of the WEF is towards transnational business. Most ‘Davos Men’ are from huge corporations and associated business enterprises. Most of the rest are from governments. Some, who may be somewhat less wealthy, are academics and public intellectuals, with a few authors, journalists and celebrities. Very few are from public interest organisations or social movements.
The ‘world’ of the WEF is big business. For the WEF, development’ means more exploitation of human, material and natural resources. Hence its 2014 Top Trends, and hence the cognitive dissonance. The WEF is ‘improving the state of the world’. Maybe. But for whom? For transnational corporations, including Big Food (see Box 1, above)? The 2014 Trends represent ‘the view from the top’, I’d say the view that is primarily good for business. Other Trends could, of course, have been added, such as degradation of soil, pollution of oceans, depletion of water, exhaustion of oil, land-grabbing, child labour, food insecurity, soaring cost of medicines, patenting of life forms, suicide of family farmers, civil wars, forced migration, corporate ownership of life forms, and indeed the pandemic obesity and diabetes. Should we be surprised that these and other sensitive topics are not mentioned in the Outlook report? Rather not. Instead, the report ends cheerily reminding us about ‘the new space race’ now joined by India and China, with 250 launches planned next year, and ‘the role space could play in humanity’s future’. Anyone for a Happy Meal on Mars? Give me a break!
References
1. World Economic Forum. Outlook on the Global Agenda 2014.
http://www.weforum.org/events/summit-global-agenda-0
2. Srour R. Widening inequality shatters mirage of social Mobility. International Press Service, 20 November 2013. Washington DC: IPS. http://www.ipsnews.net/ 2013/11/widening-inequality-shatters-mirage-of-social-mobility/
3. Stuckler D., Basu S., McKee M., Global health philanthropy and institutional relationships: how should conflicts of interest be addressed? PLoS Med 8(4): e1001020. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001020
Claudio Schuftan states. I declare an interest as a member of the People’s Health Movement, a civil society organization affiliated with the World Social Forum, and as such committed to universal primary health care on demand, and to hastening the end of casino capitalism.
Schuftan C. Big Food Watch. World Economic Forum. The big business band plays on.
[Update]. World Nutrition October-December 2013, 4, 8, xxx-xxx