No food to eat, and we are exporting it!

Pakistan has to import livestock for Eid because of the floods, on the other hand we are exporting beef to Malaysia.

With starvation and malnutrition stalking the land surely, it is morally indefensible to announce, with great fanfare, that Pakistan has just begun exporting beef, a commodity many people here can no longer afford, to our brotherly country Malaysia?

As usual, the nutrition-starved masses are relegated to invisibility since profit is involved. The present meat shortage has been exacerbated by the loss of millions of precious livestock during the recent floods but this probably has no bearing at all on those who are deciding that we are in a position to, in fact, export meat.

This latest exploitative venture is just the tip of the profitable iceberg as far as Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Malaysia, Masood Khalid, is concerned and who sings, rather out of tune when current circumstances are considered, that his agricultural homeland is rich in livestock, fruit, vegetables, milk, lentils and other cereals, spinning a decidedly fanciful web in which to enmesh Malaysian investors who, if and when they arrive on the ground, will find nothing of the sort.

Pakistan has had to import livestock for Eid requirements. In addition to this, countless fruit orchards were destroyed in the floods. Furthermore, milk has been in short supply throughout the vast agricultural heartland where grazing land has been rendered useless. Even lentils, a staple food item, are being imported for several years now. As for vegetables, ordinary people struggle to purchase enough for their daily needs and, in fact, items like onions, tomatoes, potatoes, chillies, garlic, ginger, apples, pears and goodness knows what else are all being imported.

We do not have surplus for export! Furthermore, prime agricultural land is desperately needed to grow crops for home consumption not for export to countries such as Malaysia, be they brotherly or not. Neither can we honestly spare land for the corporate livestock farming our short-sighted government is promoting in the Gulf and other countries, if we are to, somehow, manage to feed a rapidly expanding population in the years to come. Be this as it may, the first 25-ton consignment of frozen, de-boned, de-glanded beef  is due to arrive in Malaysia from Lahore at the end of this month and it is claimed, to pave the way for the promotion of the halal export business between the two countries. The meat will be sold through the massive hyper markets that are increasingly popular in Malaysia and demand for it is likely to expand once the product proves is worth. But at what benefit? And, more importantly, at what cost to the indigenous, often hungry, millions of underprivileged people just surviving on a hand-to-mouth existence?

The curse of illegal cross-border livestock trading has, over the past few years, helped push the price of meat through the proverbial roof with flood losses compounding the problem and yet, miraculously, we suddenly have a surplus of meat for export, something which just doesn’t make sense no matter from what angle the conundrum is examined. This apology for a government is, admittedly, in dire financial straits and will be increasingly so unless it takes all manner of unwelcome action but, allowing urgently required food supplies to be taken out of the country for profit on the one hand whilst screaming for foreign aid on the other, only serves to highlight the disdain the country’s supposed leaders have for the very people they supposedly represent.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th, 2010.