ECONOMICALLY ACHIEVABLE

THE EASIEST WAY TO GET RID OF A HEALTH PROBLEM IS TO BAN THE IMPORTATION OR PUT STRONG BARRIERS IN FRONT

Let’s look deeply into the RAPID ALERTS of this week. Mostly it consists things that do not have an immediate impact on human health. For instance micotoxines encountered at whatever level will not kill anybody immediately.

The same applies for pesticides residues or heavy metals . I do not want to pretend that the residuals are not harmful but rapid alert means that something which must be fight against immediately as otherwise a huge disaster will occur. But this is not the case. EU authorities have chosen the easiest way to get rid of the problem . Just ban the importation and destroy the merchandise.

University professors are making wonderful job in investigating the harm that such residues can make to the human beings. But most of them is a long term issue.

You don’t get sick or die the day after you eat a food which contains higher lever than the allowed one of pesticide or heavy metals. The daily  intake is important for the accumulation toxic chemicals
such as lead or mercury. Pesticides that we are consuming are so different . Today laboratories are checking more than 700 chemicals and finding different products most of the time. Hence the probability of our exposure to one sole chemical is almost impossible. On the contrary the researches are made against one chemical alone on how affecting the human body.

Lets say you need to eat 20 kg daily  dried figs containing high content of aflatoxine for 20 years to have liver cancer. There is no country in the world that consumes 20 kg/ year per person the the world hence spending millions of dollar to analyse aflatoxine content in figs is useless and waste of time.

But what authorities have done is to set a limit such as achievable limit. (10 ppb) But this is not a limit which takes into consideration the price to achieve . Nobody cares about the results if authorities decide 20 instead of 10. The average content of aflatoxine in natural form is not higher than 20. Hence nobody asks for the effort we make to reduce the content by %50 . How much does it costs to the consumer? What happen to  the high aflatoxine content merchandise? Thousansds of analysis are made. Millions of dollars are spent to install color sortex machines . But nobody asks for its efficiency and more important the benefit we get.

Everybody must look after ECONOMICALLY ACHIEVABLE levels but not just ban.

Avram Aji
28.04.2018