PoliticalFood

Quora Answer : Why has genetically modified food become a political issue in some countries? Isn't it supposed to be a scientific issue researched by biologists and regulated by food safety agencies?

Feb 2, 2018

Food safety agencies ARE political.

They represent government backed permissions / prohibitions on what you are allowed to sell to people.

There's always a fight between people who want the government to do more, to ensure that food is safe. Versus people who want the government to do less, so as to give producers and vendors more freedom to sell what they want.

Quora Answer : Don't you think it is unfair that someone whose only claim to US citizenship is because he was born as an anchor baby can eat better because of food stamps?

Oct 6, 2019

I think it's unfair that anybody should be so poor as to need food stamps.

Everyone should be guaranteed enough to eat.

Quora Answer : If the world was deplete of honeybees, would we also become obsolete?

Aug 29, 2018

Humanity would survive.

It's not an existential crisis like the extinction of rice and wheat due to global warming would be. Neither of these staples need honeybees.

But our diet would be extremely impoverished. As Tom Watkins says, there are artificial alternatives. But it's likely that we can't do artificial pollination at anything like the scale that bees currently do it for us.

We all love to imagine swarms of little robot bees (don't we? I mean we aren't panicking about swarms of tiny killers or anything yet) But they're still incredibly expensive compared to the free bees that nature makes.

So, if honeybees go extinct I expect a lot of good foods we currently take for granted to suddenly become a lot rarer and more expensive.

Even if we don't see mass starvation.

The extinction of wheat and rice due to global warming though ... that IS an existential threat.

Quora Answer : When was the first food bank opened in the UK? Is it true, as J. Rees-Mogg claimed, that they existed under the previous Labour government?

Feb 8, 2018

This would be same Labour government that believed it had to keep running the neoliberal order it inherited from Margaret Thatcher, rather than make a principled stand against poverty?

Sure it had food banks. But as Lucy Hendrickx points out, very few.

I agree with everything in Terence Kreft's answer here. Except the rhetorical point of saying this wasn't a Labour government. (Which is I why I haven't upvoted it.)

But the principle is right. That Labour government accepted too much Tory orthodoxy. And that's why food banks were a thing even then.