The effect of American events and personalities on these tiny isles in the Caribbean is as dramatic as it is sobering.
For better and for worse, our economies are inextricably linked.
We are dependent on fickle American tourists for our daily bread. If the US economy catches a cold, our economies come down with life-threatening pneumonia.
And so few of our goods are able to match the levels of quality and quantity demanded by regulators and importers alike – or so we are told.
On the other side of the ledger, our US dollar-driven economies spend as much as we take in and very often more. From bread to beef, from apples to appliances, so much of the kitchen, the living room and the wardrobe is packed with American products, either by brand name or origin.
Consumers march to an American drumbeat, convinced that locally made products are inferior. Yet, product recalls of food, drugs and vehicles are frequent. Outbreaks of deadly e.Coli and salmonella bacteria have killed or sickened Americans even while products made in Barbados continue to be consumed free of such dramatic incident.
And so, is in the area of food to which we turn our attention, and earnestly seek yours.
Considerable quantities of meat, vegetables and processed food grown and made in the USA are shipped here daily. Most of the $750 million dollars in food imports are spent on many of the same foods Americans consume and quite a few they do not, for they are for export only.
And so, it is with pop culture and increasingly, politics, what happens in the US has a direct impact on us.
The era of Trump has already had an impact on our friends and relations who have migrated to the US, legally and illicitly. They live daily with the coarsening of public discourse, the norming of ethnic, racial and sex prejudices, the cheapening of democratic values long espoused by American diplomacy, and the dimming of the light of truth.
Now, we must confront another feature of the American presidency with direct impact on our lives – the dismantling of regulations and restraints on already unbridled capitalism.
In the last three years, US federal agencies for communications, transport, energy, environment and consumer protection have abandoned regulations in favour of self-regulation by corporate America itself.
But perhaps the most visceral implication for the way we live now in Barbados is the planned relaxation on food safety inspection rules for US pork, to be followed by a similar relaxation of rules on beef – meat that is imported daily and consumed unquestioningly by Barbadian authorities and civilians.
Now, NBC News has quoted several current and former US Department of Agriculture inspectors as warning that a change is now set to roll out nationwide to plants that process more than 90 per cent of American pork.
Under the USDA’s “New Swine Inspection System”, the number of federal inspectors on the processing line, handling hog carcasses and checking for defects, is to be reduced from as many as seven to two or three who will conduct limited hands-on inspection of the carcasses.
Instead, the processing plant’s own workers – with no federally required training – are to check and sort hog carcasses. They will let the federal inspectors, called consumer safety inspectors, check their work from a distance.
And the limit on the rate at which carcasses can be moved for processing and inspection — known as line speed – is to be removed, first for hogs and eventually for cows.
A pilot programme for this new system is already at work at five pork processing plants across the US, NBC has reported.
In sworn affidavits to US regulators and interviews with the network, five food safety inspectors have raised a red flag upon witnessing the pilot in action.
Food Safety and Inspection Service inspector Jill Mauer said bluntly: “The consumer’s being duped.
“They believe that it actually is getting federally inspected when there’s no one there to even watch or do anything about anything.
“If this continues across the nation, when you open your package of meat, what you’re gonna get for a pathogen is gonna be a mystery.”
Pathogens – the germs and substance defects a food safety system is intended to eliminate, include faeces, sex organs, toenails, bladders and unwanted hair – could end up as ‘passed’ meat, she told NBC News.
Processing plant workers with little experience or training are doing minimal checking and sorting in an effort to maintain line speeds and keep owners happy, she and the other whistleblower-inspectors have claimed.
With fresh and newly processed food arriving on our shores by plane and ship every day from Miami and other major American ports, destined for Barbadian home, hotel and restaurant tables, we cannot conceive of the potential impact that undetected flaws could have if further cooking and processing here is insufficient to neutralise these pathogens.
It is inconceivable that such lax inspection rules would apply to Barbadian food and beverage products imported to the US. Beside the USDA and Food and Drug Administration restrictions, our food processing and food service industries have invested millions in such standards and processes as HACCP – Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point – and ISO 22000.
These are not American but global classes of sanitary and phytosanitary standards.
The ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System can be applied from farm to fork in any organisation along the chain. A firm once certified to ISO 22000 shows customers that they have a food safety management system that can provide consumer confidence in the product.
Ultimately, given the lack of political will and resources to more closely police US-made food, hope must therefore lie in our efforts to decrease our dependence on food imports altogether.
The Government intends ambitiously to reduce primary agricultural imports by 25 per cent to 30 per cent in 2019-2020, with a further 10 per cent reduction each year thereafter through its flagship Farmers Empowerment and Enfranchisement Drive (FEED).
We eagerly await a report card on the progress of this programme from Minister of Agriculture Indar Weir because ultimately we stand to gain savings in scarce foreign exchange, a cadre of independent and prosperous Bajan farmers, and more and better options for consuming healthier homegrown meat and vegetables.
Until then, let the buyer beware.
