WSJ wrote:Updated July 17, 2013, 7:15 a.m. ET
Insecticide-Contaminated Food Kills at Least 22 Schoolchildren in India
Free Food Was Provided Under Government's Midday-Meal Program
NEW DELHI—At least 22 children died and more than two dozen others are seriously ill after eating food contaminated with insecticide at a state-run school in eastern India, government officials and doctors said Wednesday.
The children, aged between 8 and 12, fell sick Tuesday after eating lunch at an elementary school in Gandaman, a village about 65 miles from Patna, the capital of Bihar, one of India's poorest states.
The meal of rice, soybean and potato curry was provided under the central government's "midday-meal" program, which aims to ensure children at government schools get at least one free cooked meal a day. India has more food-insecure people than any other country in the world.
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India is in the process of introducing one of the most ambitious food-aid programs ever attempted, with the aim of distributing cheap grain to about 70% of the country's 1.2 billion people. The National Food Security Law is likely to be approved when Parliament reconvenes next month.
Critics say the legislation, which is expected to swell the annual food-subsidy bill to around $20 billion, is an attempt by the ruling Congress party to attract support ahead of next year's national election, and that the money would be better spent on improving agricultural infrastructure.
The issue here is providing more food with less use of herbicides and insecticides. We spoiled westerners with relatively bloated salaries can look down our noses at these people while we pay 3 times the price to buy organic and donate to save the whales. But if you want to do more with less for people who need it most, then you need to be smart about how you grow, process, store, and deliver food.
GMO offers the potential not to have to use chemicals to grow food. Those chemicals aren't just lowering the sperm counts in our men - a trend seen worldwide. In some cases they kill.
We cannot know exactly where this particular food batch got contaminated. India has a crazy system of farm subsidies - not dissimilar to one in the US - whereby they buy food from farmers to keep the price up. Sometimes this food is stored for over 2 years before being used in programs such as these. But the general approach is simple. Do more with less, and do it without dangerous chemicals if at all possible.
- Bill