• Investment World
• eWorld
• Catalyst
• Mentor
• Life
• Canvas
• Praxis
• Urban Pulse
• Brand Quest

D. Murali

PURITANS in economics, who usually speak stuff that not many understand, often worry that their field has got infiltrated by people who do not mind stooping down from the high reaches of economics to get their message across to the lay.

A greater worry than the academic obsession with adulteration of economics is the economics of adulteration.

With the cola companies shunting between bottling plants and inventory pile-up, between labs and courts, and everybody having second thoughts about buying the brown fizz, it should be remembered that the mix-up has some simple goals — such as shoring up profits.

When you can produce a product with ingredients x and y, at a cost of c, and your cost accountant says you can make the product, almost, with ingredients x and z, at a cost of d, the proposition becomes attractive if d is less than c.

But since your customers may not like to see the name of z on the product label, you may prefer to call z, y, and that is where ethics takes a backseat.

Or, when price of y keeps soaring, you may choose to buy less of y and manage the shortfall by padding up with a low-cost alternative.

In an age when `pure' has lost much of its relevance, one does not view adulteration as a sin that merits collective stoning.

Adulteration may not find a place in the Encarta online dictionary but the word adulterate — meaning make less pure by adding inferior or unsuitable elements or substances to it — owes its origin to Latin adulterat, that is, to change, corrupt, commit adultery.

Adulteration is the cousin of corruption, because corruption is defined as something debased by errors or alterations; synonymous with adulteration, contamination, vitiated, polluted.

"The driving force behind food adulteration is economics," writes Nicholas H. Low of the University of Saskatchewan.

"In the case of apple juice, a worldwide shortage of apple concentrate in 1995 caused the market price to fluctuate between $7 and $14 per gallon," he cites.

"By contrast, the wholesale price of inexpensive sweeteners is stable and ranges from $0.70 to $1.40 per lb/solids."

Food processing industry watchers would vouch that similar economic situations are encountered for other fruit juices and honey.

"Estimates on the extent of marketplace adulteration of foods rich in carbohydrate range from a low of 5 per cent to as high as 25 per cent," writes Low.

He has pegged the figure at an alarming high of as much as one-in-four bottles.

Why is it tough to detect the adulteration of foods rich in carbohydrates, such as fruit juices, honey, and maple syrup?

"Because a variety of commercial sweeteners exist which exactly match the major carbohydrate profiles of these foods."

When some 50 body-builders, spectators and journalists fell ill after consuming contaminated soymilk at a bodybuilding championship meet in Ludhiana, an edit that ran in the media noted that the crime of adulteration is not committed against an individual.

"Those who contaminate any item of medicine and food, whether solid or liquid, wilfully put at risk the lives of an unknown number of people," it said, and sought as minimum sentence life imprisonment for the guilty.

A report in a language paper from Gujarat wonders how when the prices of mangoes ranged from Rs 25 to Rs 40 per kg, their juice was also sold at the same rates — despite the fact that a kilogram of mangoes yields only up to 400 gm of juice.

"The economics involved are very strange. Quite obviously, the sellers are not getting real and it is not real mango juice that is sold as the much-relished keri no ras.

Insiders say that a mix of papaya, pumpkin, a little quantity of mango and flavouring is being packed off to unsuspecting customers."

All that a seller needs is a mixing machine, and if some manure too is slipped into it, you would not know.

Looking at the after-effects of adulteration that a company could suffer — in the form of litigation and boycott of its products — it may be reasonable to rein in economic considerations when indulging in adulteration.

(Economics@thehindu.co.in)

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication

Stories in this Section
Let brokers migrate

Copyright © 2003, The Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu Business Line