Thinking about Expo as a source of events and meetings not only among different cultures but mostly among different ideals and ways of facing the world, is something quite obvious to everyone; but is all of this a real incentive towards innovation, or a new desire in going backwards to that simplicity that deeply represents the beauty of nutrition and its extraordinary world?
Industry and technology are considered a relevant point of increasing strenght for most of the companies involved in this sector, as if showing their own richness in farming, production and marketing processes should imply great competence. On the contrary, everything just comes up as the expression of how fundamental efficiency is in alimentation businness where, considering stereotypes and preconceptions, attention on quality seems always more underestimated than desire of profitable economic activity is.
But is this a rigid world for real? Is the idea of mass nutrition something intended to be like this forever in businness strategy? Well, of course not.
Here you are the reason why “Good Farm Animal Welfare Awards”, occured on Tuesday the 9th of June at Cascina Triulza, turns out as a perfect reference in this exposition context where sustainability, nature and welfare appear like the official slogan. The Awards as presented were potentially compared to Grammys Awards in all the details: fantastic the flow of delagates but, most of all, relevant was the importance given to the desire of highlighting how much origins, nature and simplicity represent the new strategy in presenting the concept of “extraordinary” in 2015.
The organisation, completly entrusted to the ONLUS Compassion in world farming, with Philip Lymbery as Chief Executive Officer, has lead the event not only towards the necessity to recognise the investements made by worthy companies about a kind of animal farming as much natural as possible: underlining the benefits produced by guaranteeing animal dignity and welfare (during farming processes) on final customer safety is the way. So each Award released (41 in the whole for companies and retailers all over the world) comes up as a praise to whatever doesn’t imply cages or meshes, where free grazing and animal nourishment are considered the most extraordinary and strange fact in the world.
Everything is perfectly realised to present the main idea: origins are the new future, nature is so extraordinary that the concept of going back and living as it was in a “Heidi’s world” works as well as in a marketing way. Sure, no one could have imagined Mc Donald France, UK and Netherlands receiving a recognition to be among those realities which invest in respect for sustainable farming of pigs and chickens, equally compared to Italian companies as Ferrero, ValVerde and Fumagalli Industria Alimentare! As surprising as seeing Wood Foods Marketing (an American enterprise) sharing the “Good Egg Award” with Coop Sweden. Just marketing thinking and advertisment? Well, so they are telling us those super hamburghers are really made from love, and not using waste and scraps.
But is it such an incredible thing? Is giving new honour to the old “Heidi model” something as amazing as it seems, in a world where nutrition has to be a product among quality, quantity, satisfaction and profit? Moreover, have we noticed just right now that calling “product” and not “food” what we use to eat everyday, is such a strange discovery? Certainly, we need to recognise lots of values to “Compassion in world farming” because of its loyalty in the institution of a context able to increase competition towards animal welfare attention, within such an international event as Expo 2015 is. Focus on this topic: also the extreme inflexibility of Chinese industry seems to have been weakend by this new prospective and care about rabbits, chickens, dairy and pigs safety.
Yet, the question that keeps in our minds is: what is the reason why it’s so necessary to give a prize to companies which actually produce and work in the most rational and best possible way? Are eggs-in-vitro and ill rabbits in captivity the ordinary side of this life? What is surely clear is that the promotion of a safe and not chemical nutrition must be pursued during the Exposition Universelle at least. Then, if massaging bovines and betting on businness competition are useful ways to let us eat well, set ONLUS realities free to reward those happy animals destinated to give us pleasure in front of a delicious carbonara!
Originally written by Elena Bellini
Photocredits: “Caprette vandoies” by Demis Gallisto