Food Adulteration Argumentative

Adulteration of food with toxic chemicals harmful to health has reached an epidemic proportion in Bangladesh. The newspapers have dubbed it as the ‘silent killer’. It is very difficult to find a sector of food industry which is free of adulteration. From raw vegetable and fruits to milk and milk products to fish, meat and processed food–every food item is contaminated. Almost every day in the news papers, newer and newer methods of adulterating newer and newer types of foods are reported. Carbide, formalin, textile colors, artificial sweeteners, DDT, urea etc. are used rampantly for this purpose.

Contamination of foods with toxic chemicals pose a serious threat to public health, especially in a country like Bangladesh where due to poor health literacy, level of awareness is very low. Immediate effect of ingestion of such foods may be severe forms of diarrhoea (food poisoning), threatening life. Ironically, people from all walks of life is aware of the hazards of taking foods adulterated with toxic chemicals, but this knowledge is not translated into practice.

There is no paucity of laws and regulations to contain adulteration of food in Bangladesh such as Bangladesh Standard Testing Institute (BSTI) Ordinance of 1985, and the Pure Food Ordinance of 2005. Under the purview of these rules come the following offences: fake licenses, poor quality of food, substandard infrastructure and lack of maintaining hygiene, food adulteration, food impurity, incorrect information on food packages, selling products whose date have expired etc.

B) GM Food in Bangladesh
Bangladesh takes to GM food crops
Bangladesh has become the first South Asian country to approve commercial cultivation of a genetically modified (GM) food crop — brinjal (also known as eggplant or aubergine) spliced with a gene from the soil
bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis .

On 28 October, Bangladesh’s National Committee on Biosafety (NBC) approved cultivation of four indigenous varieties of brinjal incorporating a gene from the B. thuringiensis (Bt) to make it resistant to attacks by the fruit and shoot borer (FSB), a common pest in South and Southeast Asia.

“We will make seeds and distribute them among the farmers. Hopefully, the vegetables will be available in the market next year,” Mohammad Rafiqul Islam Mondal, director-general of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), tells SciDev.Net.

According to BARI scientists, the Bt protein in GM brinjal disrupts the digestive systems of the FSB pests, causing them to die within three days of ingestion.
The approval comes in the teeth of protests from a section of health, agriculture and environmental activists, accusing the government of ignoring the possibility of negative impacts on public health from consuming the GM version of a popular vegetable.

http://www.scidev.net/south-asia/agriculture/news/bangladesh-takes-to-gm-food-crops.html

Who should and can be held accountable for uncontrolled food adulteration in Bangladesh. What are the main ethical issues of massive food adulteration in Bangladesh? What are the corruption interfaces of uncontrolled food adulteration in Bangladesh? What are the ethical issues related to unbridled rise of GM food in Bangladesh and how government can play role to face the challenge rising GM food in relation to of food security and food safety? How best ethical practices of the civil servants can play vital role to curb food adulteration and meet the challenge of GM food.

Please write down a comprehensive essay of about 1250 words (Word ranges between 1125-1375) addressing the above questions in your own work. You c
Instructions
1. Use your own thinking and ideas and learning from the course.
2. Should be hand written.
3. Use A4 size paper. With margin 1.0 top and bottom margins; 1.0 to 1.25 left and right and about 100-150 words per page. Use both side of the paper.
4. Use Given assignment cover page format .
5. Do not any spiral binding and extra binding
6. Use at least 6 references from different scholarly books, articles, journals or other sources.
7. Standard apply to evaluation.
8. Follow standard referencing system.

Individual Assignment:
Structure and Content: 40%
Language, Style, Logical Flow, Referencing: 20%
Consistency and Relevance: 20%
Analytical Capability: 20%