6 June 2020 (Wall Street International)* — After the Coronavirus began in Wuhan, the Chinese government provided one model for containment and elimination: complete lockdown. This model was not felt to be satisfactory to most Western democracies and soon the expression “herd immunity” began to be mentioned quite frequently.
The UK toyed with the idea. Sweden seems to be suffering from it. Basically, the concept meant that, in lieu of a vaccine, folks should just go about their normal, everyday experiences and whoever caught the virus would either die or become immune.
The EU recovery programme is at odds with its planned European Green Deal.
Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto/PA Images.
4 June 2020 (openDemocracy)* — The European Central Bank and the European Investment Bank support big corporations through non-transparent processes, without taking into account social, environmental or climate criteria and without having binding criteria to stop corporate tax evasion and dividend distributions.
7 June 2020 (United Nations)* — Food safety is the absence — or safe, acceptable levels — of hazards in food that may harm the health of consumers. Food-borne hazards can be microbiological, chemical or physical in nature and are often invisible to the plain eye: bacteria, viruses, or pesticide residues are some examples.
Food safety has a critical role in assuring that food stays safe at every stage of the food chain – from production to harvest, processing, storage, distribution, all the way to preparation and consumption.
With an estimated 600 million cases of foodborne illnesses annually, unsafe food is a threat to human health and economies, disproportionally affecting vulnerable and marginalized people, especially women and children, populations affected by conflict, and migrants.
7 June 2020 (UN News)* — Eating contaminated food has caused an estimated 600 million people in the world, or almost one-in-ten individuals, to fall ill – 420,000 of whom die every year, two UN specialized agencies highlighted on Sunday [7 June 2020], World Food Safety Day.
Joining forces, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) flagged that “food safety is a shared responsibility” with a role for everyone to play, from governments, industry and producers to business operators and consumers.
