Prioritise food quality over bilateral relations – Jomo
SHAH ALAM - There are more important issues pressing us rather than our bilateral relationship with Singapore following the government’s overnight decision to impose an export ban on chicken for this country, an renowned economist Professor Jomo Kwame Sundaram said.
He said this when asked about how the ban would affect the bilateral relationships between the two countries.
Jomo stressed that the quality of food in the country must be prioritised first, as most of the time, we do not really care about the number of toxic chemicals consumed through our food except for when the time that we are exporting the food to other countries.
“How much attention do we pay, for example, to the fact that most of the time, we don’t really care about the amount of toxic chemicals which are in our food, except when that food is blocked at the causeway when we are trying to export it to Singapore or when foreign countries refuse to import food from Malaysia. That is the only time we care about them,” he said during the Sinar Daily Wacana English Edition on May 27.
He said that Malaysian life expectancy has increased tremendously over the last six decades but life expectancy has been compromised by the poor quality of food.
The bad quality of food does not only cause non-communicable diseases, in which some of it was also caused by bad nutrition and toxic substances we have been consuming.
“We don’t seem to care very much about the switch from diesel to core fire plants, for example, increased the amount of sulphite as well as sulphate which are released into the atmosphere and probably have very devastating consequences on the communities living nearby because of yellow rain or other related phenomena.
“I think we have to pay far, far more attention to these problems which press us rather than issues on how the Singapore government might feel about the export ban,” he added.
He said this during the live show he attended via online entitled ‘Food Security: The Domino Effect’ was also attended by Agricultural Policy Analyst Prof Datin Paduka Fatimah Mohamed Arshad and Subang & Shah Alam Consumers Association (CASSA) President Datuk Seri Jacob George.
The show which went live at Kompleks Karangkraf, Shah Alam, discussed on food security, looking at how the Covid-19 pandemic, rises in oil prices, extreme weather and geopolitical conflicts have shocked the food supply chain worldwide, which in turn had affected the production, processing, logistics and final demand for essential products.
Recently, Singapore’s foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan visited Malaysia for three days of intensive talks from May 17 to May 19.
However, he also conferred with convicted former Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak who was responsible for the 1MDB scandal.
His action was said to dishonour the Malaysians and according to Jomo, did not consider the feelings of the Malaysians and made the relationship between Malaysia and Singapore very complex.
