| WE SAY: Alarm bells ringing for islanders |
‘...the health and lives of Pacific Islanders seem destined to be defined by foreigners. In days past, it was the lawless buccaneers. Today, it is the unscrupulous foreign “investor” and exporter of potentially harmful food products out to make a quick buck with more than a little help from corrupt and ignorant officials at the expense of the health and lives of innocent consumers’
For the past several years now, both international and local Pacific islands organisations and NGOs have continually been raising concerns about the increase in lifestyle diseases among Pacific Islands populations.
Ailments never heard of in this part of the world have slowly but surely begun to take epidemic proportions, sending more and more people to clinics and hospitals and on expensive medications, causing a strain on the fragile health care systems of Pacific Islands governments.
In fact, Pacific Islanders are not new to foreign diseases, having been exposed to them in wave after wave every once in a while. It began in the heydays of oceanic expeditions a couple of centuries ago, when western sailors brought with them a number of communicable diseases ranging from a variety of influenzas, other respiratory ailments such as tuberculosis to venereal diseases that led to further complications.
With no immunity because of the lack of exposure to such ailments in the islanders’ long and ancient histories, the pathogens that caused these diseases spread like wild fire in local populations, in some instances decimating the entire local communities across the islands. Many such cases are well documented.
If communicable diseases took a heavy toll on Pacific islands populations in the era of exploration, a second wave of such foreign diseases began to sweep the islands over the past three decades or so.
With increased trade with the nearby developed world—particularly Australia, New Zealand and the United States—and rapid globalisation and the concomitant easing in the movement of goods, foods alien to traditional Pacific islanders’ diets began to flood islands marketplaces.
Mass produced, highly processed foods overloaded with empty calories, trans-fats and blood vessel-choking cholesterol began to play havoc with Pacific islanders’ lives. And given their traditionally sedentary lifestyles where a regiment of enforced exercise has never been the norm, islanders became easy targets for obesity-related diseases such as hypertension, coronary diseases and diabetes.
Industrially produced food being cheaper, more durable with longer shelf lives and far more convenient than garden grown food, foreign processed foods, particularly of the canned, heavily preservative-laden variety began to catch on and has all but replaced traditional foods from many Pacific Islands diets, at least for the large part in urban areas.
With sparse controls and weak—if any—mechanisms to filter through the products coming into islands countries combined with low public awareness, the absence of adequate regulation to label imported food products in a manner that the local consumer population can decipher and understand, the islands have become a convenient dumping ground for suspect goods, many of which would never be allowed to be sold in several countries.
Fat-laden, unprocessed and processed meat products are but one example of this category. Canned, brined processed meat heavy in salt and added chemical preservatives are another. Many of these foods would not pass muster in western supermarkets. Even if they did, the awareness among the public being higher and the action of government agencies and NGOs would eventually weed out such products.
Unfortunately, no such mechanisms exist in the islands. Even when they do, they are too few and far between to make a difference. And the numbers are showing—and they are worrisome. Last month, Pacific Islanders were named the fattest people in the world and the most susceptible group to non-communicable diseases, which also go by the name of lifestyle diseases.
The situation has blown to crisis proportions with governments no longer in a position to stretch their health budgets to treat sufferers. Neither is there an adequate budget to run preventative campaigns to wean youngsters off fastfoods and high risk foods such as sweetened carbonated drinks.
As if all this is not bad enough, a potential new wave of foreign initiated diseases is beginning to rear its head, if one is to go by reports coming out of Papua New Guinea. These are to do with cheap imports, dodgy ingredients, unscrupulous local manufacturers and scant regard for hygienic principles of food preparation, storage and distribution.
Last year, New Zealand’s largest company, Fonterra, was rocked by the scandal of its Chinese joint venture, which allegedly distributed melamine-laced milk powder that claimed the lives of several babies and made thousands other babies sick. The perpetrators were brought to book by China’s quick justice system and some of the accused were put to death last month with not even a whimper of protest from Fonterra, which commented that it was China’s internal matter.
Unfortunately for the Pacific Islands, there are fears that such adulterated and unhygenically manufactured products from unscrupulous Asian companies have already found their way into their supermarket and grocery shelves and are being consumed as you read this.
Worse still, entrepreneurs from Asian countries like China and the Philippines that have set up shop in countries like Papua New Guinea are throwing caution to the winds and manufacturing substandard food products in the most appalling of conditions, endangering the lives of the innocent consuming public.
Reporting from Port Moresby last month, local daily newspaper The National, quoted Customs Commissioner Gary Juffa as having said: “I was appalled to see the conditions in which these so-called investors are operating their business in the country. They have no respect for our people’s health.”
He was commenting on a Customs department report that said, “The dog cage is just between the two ovens and the floor is literally covered with animal waste and the room stinks horribly. Freshly baked scones (bread), to be sold to locals were also found on the filthy floor filled with dust, dirt, cockroaches and flies, and also had dirty laundry hung in the room.”
The problem is that a lack of awareness and training among the authorities, poor legal structures that make prosecutions difficult and a general lack of information in the buying public will ensure these practices unfortunately continue. And where any awareness in officialdom exists, it is more than likely to be “taken care of” by bribery and corruption.
As has happened repeatedly in the past, the health and lives of Pacific Islanders seem destined to be defined by foreigners. In days past it was the lawless buccaneers. Today, it is the unscrupulous foreign “investor” and exporter of potentially harmful food products out to make a quick buck with more than a little help from corrupt and ignorant officials at the expense of the health and lives of innocent consumers.
The alarm bells are ringing for all Pacific Islanders out to get a cheap bargain at their local food and grocery store.
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