Food & Beverage Technology

UN should be the ultimate choice provided it won't become a puppet in the hands of economic powers.

I strongly disagree. The United Nations, being the ideal disinterested third party, could easily be a moderator to any dispute and can establish guidelines for growers and consumers alike. I'll grant you that idea. Enforcement of any rule or law always falls on the responsibility of a sovereign power. The UN does not have sovereign power over any country or individual for many good reasons outside of this topic. To try and grant them sovereign power for just food will spoil and corrupt the UN far more than would seem possible. It will also make food quality standards that meets nobodies approval. The sovereign responsibility should lie in the consuming nation's government.

Governments may relax rules to favour their fund raisers to earn money at the expense of quality

Ok, if you're going to ignore or dismiss my point I'll attack your point.

What gives you the idea that the UN won't be influenced by their fund raisers? Why would the UN care about food quality to an impoverished country that doesn't contribute to UN funding?

Ultimately we might end up with a better world without a UN. Americans and Japanese who control the UN will become powerless. Why can't the EU control the UN?.

The UN does not do the bidding of the US or Japan. Quite a few people in the US would like to ditch the UN, and thus would agree with your first sentence.

In the final analysis, 'the market' ensures food safety.

A handful of bureaucrats cannot be expected to make laws or rules or regulations capable of ensuring the safety of the food supply for the billions of food transactions that occur daily. Only the market can do this. If a supplier wishes to stay in business he does his own quality assurance; satisfied buyers will come back; unsatisfied buyers will find a new supplier or a substitute foodstuff.

It is the job of a government to set up guidelines that deal with international imports. They should do the testing and monitoring on the quality as the food comes into the country. If the goods do not meet the preset guidelines often enough, the producers will learn that their quality control needs to be better and it isn't worth spending the money on shipping goods that won't meet the countries guidelines.

It should certainly not be the UN! The UN is primarily a collection of corrupt beauracrats. The UN should never interfer with the sovereign operation of an independent country. They have no right to do that unless they are invited and have received a request for help.

Pnaban is correct on this issue. The UN, with its proven track record is the perfect entity to administer this program. Recall there exemplary record in Iraq after GWI, the "oil for food" program was a stunning success. More recently the UN peace keepers visited biological warfare on Haiti. The troops brought in a virulent form of cholera reportedly killing 7 to 8000 Haitians.

If I were a truly nasty person, I would suggest Sri Lanka to be a test case for this trial. If I were even nastier, I would suggest the UN relocate the world headquarters to Sri Lanka

You are just stunningly clueless about the UN's actual role in both Iraq and Haiti. You also don't understand the origin of a UN peace keeper. Besides these points, distributing food is a completely different task than ensuring food safety. Ensuring food safety requires an authority level that the UN just does not have.

Sir:

Please clue me in on the stunning success of the corruption free "Oil for Food" program. As I recall no food got in but plenty of oil came out. Revenue? It went for pleasure palaces.

As for Haiti, it was in Friday's news from ABC. The link is still on Drudge, the study was by Harvard Medical School.

You are forgiven if you didn't notice the sarcasm in my o.p.

I used to live on LI, and worked in NYC for awhile. Whenever a special UN session was being held, traffic was tied up for hours. Later I lived and worked on the South Fork, UN diplomatic plates were the bane of the PD. They would block driveways, access roads, handicapped spaces with impunity.

Unfortunately intended sarcasm is often not clear in text. To often unintended sarcasm screams out much too loudly in text.

I suspect that most of the corruption keeping the food from reaching the Iraqi populous was not on the UN organizational side. At the same time, I expect some UN staff were bought for the scams to succeed.

As for cholera in Haiti, cholera is such an opportunistic disease. Studies project that as high as 4/5 of all infectious individuals never present any symptoms. So it is possible that well meaning UN support units inadvertently carried cholera to Haiti. It is also just as possible that they just happened to be in the wrong place when rumors spread.

Food safety and Peacekeeping are two different aspects of UN. As there is no other international organisation other than UN where most important nations(not races) are represented I chose it. Can somebody suggest another international body for food safety?. UN cannot take impartial decisions without being influenced by USA,Japan,UK etc.I prefer a body where all races and communities are represented in proportion to their worldwide population to replace bloody UN.

Food safety must be the responsibility of the consuming nation's government, not any international organization. Must Pakistan or Indonesia accept pork and wine as a safe food that can be a trace ingredient in a packaged food? Must the US accept coca leaves from Peru as a safe tea?

I didn't consider religious value of food but its hygiene,safety,GM,contamination,disease spreading etc

I know that you did not consider the religious value of food. Did you consider what will happen when a food born disease outbreak happens in your country but all of the documents related to the food have the appropriate UN bureaucratic seal of approval? None of the UN food inspectors are from your country or speak your language. What do you do?

As I said earlier, the UN or the World Health Organization can make recommendations and set reference standards on food safety. It is up to the sovereign government to choose or set a standard and to enforce that standard.

Language problem in communication could be solved by using an international language like English with translation in native language if required. When an item arrives authorities can take random samples and check.

You are so naive. You've seen here what happens when somebody with English as a second language tries to ask a technical question. The mix of poor language and engineering occasionally explodes into abusive rants.

You still don't understand that the UN has no legal authority in any country. What happens when an importer of food, gets flagged for not following the UN rules? For the sake of the argument, this importer is asked to have a random lot sample taken of their frozen shipment. The importer says "NO, I won't do that. My cargo is highly perishable and the shipment is time critical. I'm not going to lose a $200,000 cargo shipment to a UN inspector that doesn't know their own rules." What happens now?

If all UN member states sign a treaty drafted by UN things might work out.

I understood you want USA or some other nation to overrule UN.So you don't like it. I can wake up a sleeping person but not who do not want to wake up.I will stop here,there is no use is spending time with you.