These scandals are created by high profile brands, and are hidden from the public to maximise profit and gains. One example of how profit margins can be boosted if a producer sells a cheap item to the consumer for a high price without the consumer knowing precisely what they are buying, giving the producer power over that specific commodity chain.
2. The Horse Meat Scandal.
˜Most of us know next to nothing about how our breakfast got on the table and even less about the condition of life of the millions of people involved in its production' .
(Harvey, 1989; p.3; cited in Coe et al, 2007; p.93).
2.1 As the statement above points out, the complexity of the food industry commodity chain is huge, and not only at the breakfast table. In 2013, what is now known as ˜Horsegate' (implying its implications to be as drastic as the Watergate scandal) happened, when horse meat, or traces of, was found in beef products in major supermarkets across Europe, involving Tesco's. Labelled by The Guardian as a form of ˜serious organised crime' (Lawrence, The Guardian, September 2014), this highlighted the major flaws within the food industry commodity chain. The reason for this scandal was the producer's target to create larger profit margins, by practising cheap foreign labour, introducing more and more horses into the beef market, and selling the horsemeat as pure beef. The sheer complexity of the industry allowed the slaughterhouses to do so, and the high demand meant that there were fewer restrictions on the quality of food imports. .
3. Why have commodity chains developed?.
3.1 "A commodity chain is defined as ˜a network of labour and production processes whose end result is a finished commodity" (Hopkins and Wallerstein, 1986, p.159). .
The global commodity chain concept was introduced firstly by Gary Gereffi in the mid 1990's, to monitor how commodity chains would work on an international level.
