REMEMBER 1984? No, we are not referring to George Orwell’s dystopian and social science fiction that was published in 1949 but later earned the label of a classic.
Instead, our minds focus on the year when Tom Adams was Barbados’ leader; Walter Mondale was seeking America’s presidency, the West Indies was dominating world cricket; Margaret Thatcher was the quintessential Iron Lady and Dominica’s Dame Eugenia Charles was her Caribbean counterpart, a real tough cookie.
In was in that year that an American television slogan became a national and global catchphrase. The centrepiece of a television ad asked the important question: “where’s the beef?” and it fuelled a heated war among three fast food chains – Wendy’s, McDonald’s and Burger King – which were duking it out for a bigger slice of the huge burger market.
Today, that catchphrase has taken its place in our daily discourse, questioning the substance of an idea or product. A product that’s high on the international list is Brazilian beef, whether frozen or canned. Another is poultry from the South American nation.
Consumers in more than 25 nations, Barbados, Dominica, St Lucia, South Africa, Mexico, Japan and Grenada, among them, are also asking where’s the beef from? Is it suitable for human consumption? In the European Union (EU), which has some of the most sophisticated and stringent food inspection services, people and officials are wondering if they were victimised by lax EU inspection standards or by corruption in a small section of Brazil’s agro-business industry.
“The mutual trust that should be there has been shattered,”complained Marian Harkin, an Irish member of the European Parliament as she questioned how come allegedly tainted Brazilian beef might have entered Ireland after it was approved by the European Commission’s Health and Food safety system.
People in Barbados were searching for answers to the identical question after the Government briefly banned Brazilian corned beef. Dominica and Grenada did the same thing. Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada and the British Virgin Islands also acted.
“We will have to look at a number of things, inclusive of where the product was manufactured, and under what conditions,” said Dr Mark Trotman, senior veterinary officer about the temporary ban on shipments of Brazilian corned beef.
In a statement, Dominica’s Director of Trade, Matthan J. Walter explained that “although we have not imported beef from Brazil since 2016, we believe that there may still be business places with corned beef from Brazil being sold and as a result of which the Environmental Health Unit will carry out investigations in business places that have been identified”.
St Lucia too, said it was carrying out island-wide surveillance of firms that import and sell Brazilian corned beef.
The root of the scandal was traced to Brazil’s food inspection system. Government officials and captains of industry there are worried that failure to resolve the crisis could cost the emerging economy billions of dollars in export earnings. That’s because the country’s daily meat exports on average reached US$60 million in March before the scandal erupted. But after the crisis attracted international headlines, meat exports plummeted to US$74 000, said officials.
With its economy in a prolonged recession and a corruption scandal having forced the ouster of a president, Dilma Rousseff, the pressure was on to reassure foreign customers that Brazilian meat was safe.
It all started on March 17 when Brazilian authorities announced that employees of JBS SA, a US$20 billion conglomerate that is among the world’s largest meat producers, were under investigation for allegedly bribing government officials so they would put a stamp of approval on tainted meat or don’t inspect the beef or poultry.
But JBS wasn’t alone. The government also disclosed that Brazilian federal police has raided almost two dozen slaughterhouses of other companies, looking for evidence that producers had stuffed cardboard into sausages, turned to acid to conceal the awful smell of rotten steaks or deliberately shipped cold cuts despite the presence of salmonella. Just as bad, the government alleged that some processors had exported uninspected meat and poultry products.
Using the code name “Operation Weak Flesh”, the Brazilian authorities undertook massive searches as part of the effort to wipe out a “criminal organisation” that was breaking national and international food safety regulations.
JBS and its holding company J&F Investments have vigorously denied any wrongdoing, pledging to cooperate with Brazilian authorities. In one case, federal investigators released transcripts of recorded conversations in which suspected corrupt federal employees discussed alleged bribes involving prime beef cuts. In another, an employee of a private firm was videotaped arriving at the home of a federal meat inspector with a hefty cooler that was said to contain meat products. That explains why almost 40 federal government employees have either been arrested or face corruption charges in connection with meat and poultry inspections.
The country’s new president, Michel Timer, tried to stop the financial bleeding inviting ambassadors from countries that import meat and poultry products to a steakhouse in Brasilia to show them that the products were safe. In addition, he said any country was free to send inspectors to look at safety conditions in slaughterhouses.
China, the United States (US), Europe and emerging economies are prime targets of this show-and-tell and for good reason: Hong Kong with 181 000 tonnes; China 166 000 tonnes; Egypt 165 000 tonnes; Russia 131 000 tonnes; Iran 95 000 tonnes; Chile 70 000 tonnes, Saudi Arabia 29 000 tonnes; Italy 26 000 tonnes; Venezuela 23 000 tonnes; and the Philippines buy 20 000 tonnes of Brazilian beef.
So far, there isn’t any hard evidence that tainted meat and poultry products reached markets in the Caribbean but the episode which justifiably triggered caution around the world put the glare on the importance of food inspection and on what can happen when greed, acts of nature or inefficiency become key factors in the production or processing of food. China, the US and Europe can write volumes about such tragedies. Two years ago, the US suffered from an export ban after bird flu in the southwest killed more than 30 million birds.
It also underscored the Caribbean’s vulnerability to such external developments.