MALAYSIANS are not concerned enough about food safety and quality, said Economic Action Council member Jomo Kwame Sundaram.

He said the food consumed lacks nutrition, and is not on a par with international safety standards.

“Take, for example, a country like Singapore. Singapore does not produce a single bit of food on their own, and yet, they are considered (to have) top food security,” he said on the sidelines of a panel discussion on food security in Kuala Lumpur recently.

“You don’t have to produce everything yourself. What is important is to make sure Malaysians have nutritious and safe food. Right now, Malaysians are eating a lot of junk food.

“We are doing very badly in terms of obesity and diabetes. We have a lot of children who are stunted, and women who are anaemic.

“We have a variety of problems that are self-inflicted because of changing diets due to modern living.

“The only time we are concerned about the overuse of toxic agrochemicals is when our food exports are rejected by other countries. We should be concerned on a daily basis about what we are eating, what our children are eating and so on.”

Jomo, who is also a member of the Council of Eminent Persons, added that Malaysia’s policy target to be self-sufficient when it comes to rice does not equate to food security.

Earlier, during the panel discussion, Khazanah Research Institute’s (KRI) Tan Zhai Gen said the rice self-sufficiency target is a colonial legacy, whereby the British had sought to produce, and not import, rice to maximise net foreign exchange earnings.

The target is also a result of memories of insufficient food during the Japanese occupation and post-war food shortages, said the researcher.

Present were KRI senior fellow Fatimah Mohamed Arshad, Malaysian Agroecology Society for Sustainable Resource Intensification president Anizan Isahak and Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Ministry Deputy Secretary-General Zunika Mohamed.

“What has happened is that a policy introduced by the British has continued to the present day,” said Jomo.

“When the British ruled over us, their main concern was to maximise the amount of foreign exchange that we, the colonies, could produce. The less rice we imported, the better it was for them.

“That was why they decided to grow rice in Kerian for the federated Malay states. This policy has continued, especially after the Japanese occupation, when rice production was disrupted. We have been concerned about rice ever since.

“This focus on rice self-sufficiency has continued for many years, but the world has changed.”

Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Salahuddin Ayub last year said Malaysia aimed to achieve 80% rice self-sufficiency by 2022, up from the current 70%.

The government hopes to do this by increasing rice variants and fertilisers, and opening the door for technology transfers from China, Taiwan and Japan. Malaysia has a 22-day rice stockpile. – August 4, 2019.