SAY IT WITH FOOD

SAY IT WITH FOOD
Emotionalizing Pollution Discourse


Budi Widianarko
Professor in Environmental Toxicology and Food Safety - Soegijapranata Catholic University (UNIKA), Semarang, Members of Board of Directors Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Asia Pacific


Environmental pollution seems to be an everlasting problem in many developing countries, including Indonesia. Although the problem has been recognized for three decades, pollution is still prevalent in this country. A growing number of environmental regulation, as well as, public protests fail to reduce the number of pollution incidence, instead an ever- increasing trend of pollution is revealed. In Central Java, for example, a most recent report by the Province’s Environmental Impact Control and Management Agency (Bappedal Jateng) indicated an escalation of pollution events during the last five years.

One of several classic examples of the unrelenting environmental pollution problems in Indonesia is the Kali Tapak case in Semarang, the capital city of Central Java. Since its emergence, pollution at the Kali Tapak area has attracted a number of studies and policy intervention. The recognition of pollution incidence in the 70s has staged the Tapak case as a pioneer of environmental movement in Indonesia, however, up to now public outcries complaining the pollution have still taken place intermittently. Pollution due to industrial discharges along the Kali Tapak River was and is still the main environmental problem in the Kali Tapak area. The pollution have directly victimized the farmers and fishermen whose rice fields and fishponds dependent on water input from the Kali Tapak River. This never-ending pollution incidence has also affected the nearby coastal ecosystem.

Conspicuously, the existing pollution control regime, which mainly draws on the command-and-control paradigm has failed to reveal a satisfying performance. Piles of environmental regulation of various levels, from act down to local regulation, have not been able to deliver a substantial impact on the mitigation of environmental pollution in Indonesia. Lack of adequate enforcement has often been recognized as the cause of incompliance to environmental regulations by industries. Most probably, inadequate enforcement of environmental regulations is attributed not only to rampant practice of corruption but also to the absence of environmental awareness in the most part of the society.

Since awareness is closely connected to people’s perception, most likely there is a need to improve visualization of the effect of pollution in the people’s mind by incorporating issues that can easily touch their emotion. In this case, food safety issue may be considered as a suitable candidate.

Pollution and Food Safety
Interaction between food system and ecosystem is unavoidable, since the biological aspect of food provision is basically attached to the ecosystem. Until the present day, almost all ingredients of food are extracted from ecosystem.

Despite of the ever-progressing food technology, which led to invention of a great number of novel foods, human food system is still heavily reliant on ecosystem. As represented by the slogan “from land and to mouth”, our food is coming from a chain of processes starting from within the ecosystem. Quality and safety of food is accordingly determined by the quality of the ecosystem. Pollution taking place in an ecosystem will certainly affect living organisms, including edible species.

In the course of a pollution event, either of natural or anthropogenic origin, toxicants are released into environment. Consequently aquatic and terrestrial organisms are exposed to these chemicals. Biaccumulation of toxicants by edible species is not a surprising phenomenon. A great number of studies have demonstrated that due to the bioaccumulation-biomagnification mechanism the various toxicants are transferred along ecological food chains and reach human as one of top consumers. Concerns on the safety of food consumption related to the presence of toxicants in the environment have therefore been raised worldwide

A growing number of reports from many parts of the world have shown that pollution of aquatic
and marine ecosystems is the primary cause of accumulation of toxicants by edible species harvested or cultured in these ecosystems. Elevated levels of toxicants in seafood species are known to be responsible for increasing dietary intakes of the hazardous chemicals by the human consumers.

Emotional Touch
Learning from responses toward media coverage on food safety issues, it is clear that it has a strong potential to drag public attention. Food safety issue is relatively more “eye-catching” and emotionally more significant than other conventional environmental issues. There is, therefore, an opportunity to make use of food safety issues for dragging public attention to environmental matters.

Traditionally, environmental pollution campaigns employ various issues, such as air and water quality, “lungs of the world” (in preservation campaign of tropical rain forest), biodiversity and indigenous knowledge, and many others. These issues, however, are sometimes too abstract for laypeople. Even if an issue can be digested cognitively by general public, but to transform it into real action is a different story. As mentioned previously, lack of awareness is one of important factors contributing to environmental negligence in the society. Since awareness is closely connected to people’s perception, most likely that incorporation of issues - which have emotional significance - may contribute to the increase of environmental consciousness.

The Buyat case, in North Sulawesi - involving Newmount Mining Company - has demonstrated how food safety issue is very effective in raising people’s awareness on pollution incidence. It is interesting to learn that Nabiel Makarim, who was then the State Minister for Environment, declined to eat fish caught from the gulf of Buyat during a dialogue session with local community (see KOMPAS 5/8/04). Ironically, only a few days earlier, the Minister declared that no pollution took place there (KOMPAS 27/7/04). As expected, this refusal was immediately and openly criticized by public. For general public, a very important message conveyed from the above incidence is that the fish from Buyat is unfit for consumption.

Most likely, the minister’s refusal is a genuine personal decision, driven by survival instinct. This is, of course, reflecting the very nature of human being. A lesson that can be learned from this little “drama” is that food safety seems to be an effective means for communicating the state of environment. The prompt emotional response toward a food safety issue can be explained by the fact that food has a direct personal link to human. It has physical and emotional ties to human body and mind. Borrowing words from Elspeth : “Food at different times touches disparate aspects of life, including love, sex, relationships, family, economics, comfort, obsession, pleasure, control, desire, shame, disgust, fear, hatred, work, leisure, sickness, death, birth and many more”.

From the history of industrial pollution, particularly in Japan, it is very well recognized that sickness due to severe pollution incidents, such as the Minamata and Itai-itai diseases in Japan were directly connected to food consumption. The Minamata disease was resulted from consumption of seafood contaminated with methyl-mercury, whereas the Itai-itai disease was triggered by consumption of cadmium-contaminated rice.

To sum up, despite of the fact that environmental pollution is an everlasting problem in Indonesia, there are still opportunities to improve the situation. One of them is by incorporating food safety issue in the public discourse of pollution. Incorporation of an issue that has physical and emotional significances to human, such as food safety, can be expected to rise to environmental consciousness among the people.
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