This Al Jazeera report on the horsemeat scandal takes a different tack, suggesting that class had something to do with the scandal--and that it may also provide an opportunity.
"The food industry across Europe displayed a contempt for consumers. Because the food that ended up containing horse meat was consumed primarily by the poor."
And that's kind of it in a nutshell, isn't it? Not just horse meat, but food deserts, food swamps, famine, food banks, all these are issues experienced by "poor people." Not "us". Not the mythical "middle class". We don't have this problem, they do. But food insecurity is a global issue, and it's getting to the point that in order for you and I to eat, someone else is going to have to starve. And it's getting closer and closer to the point where that's not going to be someone way over there, but someone here in Canada, here in the US or the EU. Because food security is an issue best treated with democracy--real democracy, not this faked up version we've got now. When people make their own decisions and can drive public policy to support those decisions, rather than having on policy be made for reasons often antithetical to our interests, or the greater interests of society, that's when things can change.
Because, when if comes to food security issues, "the poor" are really just those of us out at the leading edge of the wave. As the edge breaks, more and more of us are going to start crashing down, suddenly finding ourselves food-poor.
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