Background to the food packing world record challenge
This past Saturday over 659,000 meals were packaged for the West African country of Mauritania by 1,600 caring volunteers from the University of Guelph community. This event was also part of the university’s BetterPlanet Project, which “is a call to action for the University of Guelph community and people around the world to work together to find solutions for a healthy, equitable and sustainable world.”
The food was paid for the second year in a row by Kinross Gold Corporation, a Canadian-based mining company that operates a gold mine in Mauritania. The company’s logo was featured on the packages, complete with English-only instructions for the Arabic and French speaking country.
Kinross is one of the top five gold mining companies in the world. One of its largest operations is the Tasiast open-pit mine in Mauritania, which it acquired for $7.1 billion in 2010. The mine is attracting more and more controversy in the West African country for its detrimental social and environmental impacts and lack of benefits for the wider population. Local communities have seen unusual numbers of livestock die from poisoning, and are pointing at open-pit storing of cyanide tailings, which can poison water sources. The Tasiast mine has yet to receive certification for cyanide management and no independent environmental impact assessment has ever been conducted for the mine.
The Mauritanian government does not have the capacity to conduct such a study, let alone enforce environmental regulations. Kinross has benefited from the government’s lack of capacity and notorious corruption to minimize benefits to the country: royalty taxes are a meagre 3 per cent, work is largely outsourced to foreign subcontractors with low labour standards, and union-busting occurs on a wide scale. When the Mauritanian president made his impatience with the company clear, Kinross appeased him by hiring his cousins as administrators.
This past summer, 90 per cent of the workers at the Tasiast mine went on strike. Their grievances included a call for Kinross to respect the commitments made in 2011 with regards to pay, medical coverage, and the decent treatment of mining staff. The workers also protested against various positions taken by management, such as moves to cut bonus pay and the refusal to transfer seriously ill employees to the capital Nouakchott. It was clear this summer that Kinross’ own Mauritanian workers did not consider them a “socially responsible” company.
In addition to all this, Mauritanians find themselves routinely struggling with famine. Chief among the root causes are the economic policies adopted by Mauritania over the recent decades, under the unrelenting pressure of international financiers. These policies embrace large-scale mining investments, while leaving little place for traditional small-scale domestic food production. Under this agenda, the country’s economic sovereignty and its ability to address famines are surrendered to corporations like Kinross, allowing them subordinate local populations to its greedy interests.
What is not addressed by Kinross or the University of Guelph is whether they are making an effort to address the root problems of the famine, poverty, and exploitation in West Africa. Could the vitamin packets that were manufactured in the USA, shipped to Canada, and then packed and shipped to Mauritania be obtained more locally to those in need? Could the food have been grown and shipped from a local provider to Mauritanians who we could pay to package the food? If 1,600 Mauritanians were paid for two hours at their legal minimum wage, it would cost just $2,272 CAD to pack that same food. What is the price of our “experience” of helping the less fortunate in other countries? It is certainly impressive that 1,600 students and community members at the University of Guelph showed up to package food for Mauritanians in need. This demonstrates that we care significantly about fighting hunger and poverty across the world. Although we may not have the answer to solving world hunger, it is certainly worth asking how we can make the most helpful, dignified, and long-lasting impact.
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now a cornerstone of the vast majority of major corporations’ public relations strategies. It is a concept where companies use social and environmental concerns in their business operations. This can include “corporate philanthropy” (e.g., Ronald McDonald House), “cause related marketing” (e.g., breast cancer research branding on products), sponsoring awards (e.g., Reebok’s Human Rights Awards), and the ever popular corporate “codes of conduct” that many companies have now instituted. This can be seen very clearly in the fossil fuel industry that has almost universally adopted the language of environmentalists in their public relations. Take for example British Petroleum’s slogan “Beyond Petroleum.” BP was responsible for the largest offshore oil spill in history in 2010 at their Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.
CSR dollars from Kinross are being spent right here in Guelph. Kinross has donated $1 million to fund the Kinross Gold Chair in Environmental Governance as well as $1 million to start the Canada-Brazil Research Network for “responsible resource extraction.” Contrast this last maneouver with Kinross’ vocal opposition and lobbying efforts to defeat Bill C-300, which would have given the Canadian government the ability to investigate human rights and environmental abuses of resource companies abroad. How’s that for corporate social responsibility?
Why is it that our universities are being increasingly drawn into these “photo-ops for cash deals” with major corporations? This is happening in the context of ever-increasing tuition fees to compensate for public underfunding, and a piling of crushing student debt. Corporate “donations” and research dollars are being used fill the gap in public funding. As they increase, as corporations slap their name on buildings, research chairs, entire departments and fund more for-profit research, our universities will become more likely to participate in these CSR projects. Our role as a community is to push back, question these for-profit relationships and to demand a university system that sees education as a social good, not only a training and research centre for large corporations.