Global Agenda for Food Companies

Kunio Egashira Vice Chairman of the Board of Councillors, Nippon Keidanren President and CEO, Ajinomoto Co., Inc.

Every year in mid-October, the CEOs of 20 leading food companies around the world gather together for a two-day summit to discuss issues of global importance. The annual Global Food CEO Forum has met five times to date, first in Paris, and then in Amsterdam, New York, Paris again, and most recently in Boston. This year, the meeting will take place in London. Those attending include the CEOs of Nestlé, Unilever, The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Kraft Foods, Cargill, Groupe Danone, Kellogg Company, and Ajinomoto from Asia among others.

Before each forum, current topics of common interest are selected for discussion. These include such areas as food safety and security, electronic commerce, anti-counterfeiting, obesity, and international accounting standards. Of these, the issue of food safety and security has received most attention and has generated intense discussion, as it involves a string of controversial issues including genetically modified food, BSE, and avian influenza. I am confident that the participants are already using the results of these discussions to the benefit of their respective countries.

Another major topic that has been on every participant's mind but has not yet been placed on the table is the prospect of a global food crisis. The U.N. estimates that the world population will grow from the current 6.3 billion or so to over 10 billion before the end of the century, making a food crisis almost inevitable in the not too distant future. With the future of mankind at stake, we need to assemble the world's best and brightest to look for solutions, regardless of national or organizational boundaries. Needless to say, the CEO Forum members will be ready to offer whatever resources and assistance necessary to support this effort.

In fact, some forum members are already engaged in research programs specifically aimed at mitigating the threat of a global food crisis, applying their advanced knowledge of biotechnology and genetic engineering to increase harvests.

As a group of socially responsible corporations whose business is food production, it is our duty to give back to society by developing a means to ward off a global food crisis. It is the least we can do.