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Australian food manufacturer Patties Foods is facing serious consequences of some consumers
have fallen ill with Hepatitis A after eating a batch of its Nannas Frozen Mixed Berries product.
The Company has extended its food recall to a second brand, Creative Gourmet Mixed Berries.
The Company said the recall of the Creative Gourmet Mixed Berries 300g (all Batches up to and
including Best Before 10 December 2017) and 500g (all Batches up to and including Best Before
6 October 2017) plastic bag and cardboard box packs was a precautionary measure, in the
interests of public safety. The Creative Gourmet recall follows the announcement yesterday of a
Consumer Recall of all batches of Nannas Frozen Mixed Berries 1kg packs with a Best Before
date up to and including 22 November 2016, on advice from the Victorian Health Department of
potential Hepatitis A contamination.
The products are made from four berries strawberries, raspberries, blackberries from China,
and blueberries from Chile packed in China and distributed in Australia by Patties, based in
Bairnsdale. It is distributed mainly to Woolworths, Coles and IGA supermarkets. It is unclear
whether the contamination occurred in China or Chile.
Implications
Patties sent about 360 packs of frozen berries to laboratories Australia, Europe and North
America for Hepatitis A testing.
Fifteen people in Queensland, 11 in NSW, four in Victoria, two in Western Australia, one in the
Australian Capital Territory and one in South Australia are believed to have contracted hepatitis
A after eating the suspect berries.
Patties Foods recalled a number of different brands of frozen fruit, including Nanna's and
Creative Gourmet, after they were epidemiologically linked to 31 cases of consumers across
Victoria, Queensland and New South Wales.
What much of modern supply chain management is focussed on, and contemporary logistics
facilitates, is the integration of western engineering design and marketing capabilities with
emerging markets' wages, labour and even (poor) environmental practices
Benefits of globalization
With the globalization of manufacturing operations, having a global procurement network that
can support and react to your supply chain needs is important. According to many chief
procurement officers, selecting a strategic supplier that provides manufacturing locations with
consistent global quality and a reliable local service, is a challenge.
Unethical Manufacturing
Further it may be termed as unethical manufacturing like what happened in case of apple in
China and may lead to labor disputes as well disputes between countries.
4.Health Guidelines- The importing counties whose companies takes advantage of supply chain
from abroad should take care that proper health and quality guidelines framed by the country are
followed before making items in foreign countries
Case -2
Indian cotton exports = enormous export of scarce water
Virtual water
Cotton is by no means Indias largest export commodity petroleum products followed by gems
and jewellery follow closely behind. All of these exports require water to produce, and the
quantities needed are staggering. Not only does it take water to grow anything, it also takes water
to make anything: cars, furniture, books, electronics, buildings, jewellery, toys and even
electricity. This water that goes largely unseen is called virtual water.
Whats easy to forget is that virtual water is as real as the water you drink. Producing 1kg of
cotton in India consumes 22,500 litres of water, on average, according to research done by
the Water Footprint Network. In other words, this 22,500 litres of water cannot be used for
anything else because it has either evaporated or is too contaminated for reuse.
By exporting more than 7.5m bales of cotton in 2013, India also exported about 38bn cubic
metres of virtual water. Those 38bn cubic metres consumed in production of all that cotton
werent used for anything else. Yet, this amount of water would more than meet the daily needs
of 85% of Indias vast population for a year.
Doing things differently
Cotton doesnt usually consume this much water. The global average water footprint for 1kg of
cotton is 10,000 litres. Even with irrigation, US cotton uses just 8,000 litres per kg. The far
higher water footprint for Indias cotton is due to inefficient water use and high rates of water
pollution about 50% of all pesticides used in the country are in cotton production.
Most of Indias cotton is grown in drier regions and the government subsidises the costs of
farmers electric pumps, placing no limits on the volumes of groundwater extracted at little or no
cost. This has created a widespread pattern of unsustainable water use and strained electrical
grids.
Recent reports show that Indias water consumption is far too high. In 54% of the country 40 to
80% of annually available surface water is used. To be sustainable, consumption should be no
more than 20% in humid zones and 5% in dry areas, to maintain the ecological function of rivers
and wetlands.
Indias extensive groundwater resources are also rapidly being depleted, with58% of wells in the
drier north-west India experiencing declining water levels. By 2030 demand will outstrip supply
by 50%, according to the World Resources Institute.
.
The new Indian governments solution to the spectre of growing severe water scarcity is the
$168bn (113bn) National River Linking Project, which will link 30 rivers with 15,000km of
canals. This will transfer 137bn cubic metres of water annually from wetter regions to drier ones.
However, the country exports far more water than that, in the form of virtual water, in cotton,
sugar, cereals, motor vehicles and its many other exports.
Faltering forward
Most of Indias water-rich crops such as cereals and cotton are grown in the dry states of Punjab,
Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, which have very high evaporation rates, unlike wet states such as
Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa. This perverse situation greatly exacerbates Indias water problems
and is largely the result of government policies.
That said, there is growing interest in the Better Cotton Initiative, an industry-led effort using
standards to reduce cottons water footprint. Organic cotton production also has a lower net
water use because it uses no chemicals. Encouragingly, India currently produces two-thirds of
the worlds organic cotton. However, this is just 2% of the countrys cotton acreage.
Rather than matching production of goods to the sustainable use of existing water resources,
India, like governments around the world, hopes to use engineering to increase the amount of
water, said Hoekstra. Instead, India could grow cotton in less arid regions with more efficient
irrigation and fewer pesticides to greatly reduce the crops impact on water resources.
Ironically, India is for no reason producing cotton in dry arid regions which makes no sense
when the country does not have adequate irrigation and other water resources.
Case-3
Most of the resultant products of our growth-addicted economy are useless, obsolete and
unnecessary junk that do not contribute to our human purpose; on the contrary they impoverish,
deplete and contaminate our eco-livelihood.
Over-consumption leads to higher demands on non-renewable energy. In this process we have
degraded our environment and eroded our social fabric; eternal economic growth is a failed
system with biophysical limitations and no understanding of thermodynamic flux. In theory
limitless growth is modeled on an open system, but Earth is enclosed in finite limitations,
fluctuating marginally as a planetary ecosystem. The eco-footprint of our over-consumption
habits are compromising the balance of this steady state structure.
Becoming engineers and designers, planters and healers, we have to de-materialize production
and promote the maintenance and longevity of products, rethinking consumption and
incorporating growth to other sectors that have minimum energy impact and maximum social
significance. We have to consider industrial production, protect food autonomy, energy selfreliance, and the opportunity for business reorganization in self-management ventures and
quality investment.
We also really need a major ethos transformation from the great economic architects of our
times; they must help correct the belief that growth economies will solve our precarious
economic state. As Ivan Ilich has written, the belief that economic growth at all costs will
eradicate poverty and improve our lives endlessly implies a contradiction in the joint pursuit of
equity and economic growth. Energy and social equity grow concurrently only to a point. The
new economy would instead increment subjective wellness standards as we shift the emphasis
from money and economic growth to an emphasis on team spirit, stewardship and social equity.
In 2009, the German president went some way to summarizing this view, implying that we
should stop our fixation on economic growth and learn to live with less.
The aggregate growth economy reached a certain point and brought improvement to the human
experience, beyond which it has now become un-economic. At this place increasing energy
consumption lessens substantially the equity of life for all of us. Signs of this destruction are
everywhere on Earth. The perversity of GDP is killing our planet, making humanity less
equitable, futureless and on the whole more miserable.
Through this transition to the new economy the oil based power sector will begin to run
primarily on renewable energies. In this capacity we have to reformulate energy reliance and
integrate more and more renewable into the old system as it readjusts. Big benefits and
qualitative growth for society will come when we improve renewable energy transmission lines,
eliminating spillage, increasing storage capabilities and smart grid technologies.
Also further there have been cases showing that overproduction has lead to many malpractices in
production of food grains, fruits etc
For Example,
In May 2014, the European Union banned the import of all mangos as well as four
vegetables from India, because last year pests were discovered in at least 207 consignments of
produce.
EU inspectors found fruit flies and tobacco white flies in the infested shipments. Neither is
harmful to humans, but both pose a serious threat to European tomato and salad crops, which are
worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
The most prestigious market for Indian basmati rice, the USA, has put on hold all
consignments of the rice being imported there. In a major setback to Indian basmati exporters,
the US Food and Drug Authority has refused to accept basmati being exported to that country, on
account of traces of pesticides found in the food grain.
It is learnt that the FDA has refused to allow these basmati consignments to be released to traders
for onward distribution to retailers. These consignments, consisting of over 100 containers, have
been offloaded and kept at various US ports, while the authorities there analyze the pesticide
content in the rice and assess the likely health hazards on its consumption.
Although incomplete and in need of further discussion, I will attempt to summarise 10 points
worth discussing.
1) Develop a new economic ethos that stands for the common good of Humanity and Earth.
2) Bring the economy back to its due place in the complexity of society, with internal markets
that return the epicenter of business to community.
3) Develop technology that is sustainable and retrofitting. Ecological tax-reform with the implicit
notion that resources extracted from nature deplete our bio-system and should internalise
external costs. To ensure social equity we must put limits on resource mining.
4) Shift and reorganise production to re-use, maintain, restore, re-cycle, and design robust
products with high product lifetimes, revitalising production of goods at the community scale.
5) Drop our consumption habits and moving away from an oil, coal, nuclear-based economy,
improving energy strategies that help transition to a renewable based power grid. We can achieve
high penetration of renewables by improving energy storage, transmission infrastructure, new
resources, variability and grid flexibility; eliminating spillage by increasing our storage capacity.
6) Move to 100% reserve requirements, eliminate the fractional reserve banking and downgrade
central banks, putting capital in the hands of community and lending cooperatives and away
from private banks and clearing houses. Enclose the remaining commons of rival natural capital
in public trusts and management.
7) Democratise all orders and social subsets, generating participatory democracies inside each
circle. Self-determination will flourish in a civil society who controls and supervises the private
sector and state.
8) Limit use of resources to rates that ultimately result in levels of waste that can be absorbed by
the ecosystem. (Daly 2005) Create biotechnology that harvests waste, regenerates biomass,
biodiversity and atmosphere, creating top soils and healthy water systems.
9) Prevent war economics and predatory derivations. This includes redistribution of privilege
capital and an honest revision of private property.
10) Empower a spiritual vision of the world that gives back a sense of transcendence and
wonder. Engage in our formidable creative labour during this rather brief and minute transit
aboard diminutive planet Earth.
For a new economy to develop qualitatively, its baseline must strive for elevating social
minimum and lowering drastically maximums for privilege. It must measure what really matters.
Our goal as a healthy society is to have an economy that maximises well-being. Social equity
comes in many forms, beginning with the securitisation of education and knowledge, health care,
shelter, food autonomy and other liberties.
Case 4(UBER)
Born out of the frustration of two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs trying to catch a cab in Paris, Uber's
popular mobile phone taxi-hailing services have mushroomed since being launched in 2010 and are
offered in nearly 270 cities worldwide
Some little-known facts about Uber
involving similar accusations in Chicago earlier this year. There have also been several other instances of
Uber drivers being accused of sexually assaulting a passenger in such cities as Seattle and Washington,
D.C.
Such claims are at the heart of the growing concern, evidenced in the California lawsuit, that Ubers
standards when vetting potential drivers could leave something to be desired. The companys website
calls Uber the safest ride on the road and boasts about the rigorous screening process to which its
drivers are subjected. Meanwhile,
Not only in few of the countries mentioned above, uber has been banned and restricted in many countries
primarily due to licensing norms. In every country major issue has been that uber has been running
unlicensed taxis and posing a threat to the traditional taxi drivers as well.
To conclude we can say that born in 2010, Uber is perhaps in a bid to grow fast is breaking all laws and
running unlicensed taxis is the primary cause of its controversies all over the world. Further due to its
running model, that is it is only a middleman with no ownership over taxis, it has very less responsibility
over its taxis which is a threat to public safety.