Tesco Lies to the BBC

While I am sometimes up early enough to catch Farming Today on BBC Radio Four, it starts at 5:45 in the morning, I was really glad that I did today. As I have written about previously, here in the UK what's called a standard chicken some supermarkets have been selling for three pounds each or two for five pounds.

Following a series of programmes on television that highlighted the low standard of welfare inflicted upon these birds to achieve this price, initially Tesco's said that it had seen no impact on its sales. On farming today they even reported that Tesco reported an increase in sales of standard chicken. My sources tell me that this was a lie. In fact as I posted just last week Tesco have notices up in store saying that they are trying to expand production of the high welfare chickens.

Today, Farming today were reporting that Tesco will be selling standard chickens at one pound and ninety-nine pence as a special offer.

After checking with my sources, I discover that far from the television campaign not impacting sales, Tesco have lost sales. People are rejecting the low welfare standard chicken and as they have done little to source high welfare chickens, they are loosing market share.

It just goes to prove that the supermarkets don't follow the customers lead as they claim but will inflict on us whatever rubbish will make them a profit.

Processed Food Is Causing Tropical Deforestation

While the link to quality food, supermarkets processed foods, deforestation and climate change is not in the forefront of many peoples minds, the link is a direct one.

The food industry will always use the cheapest ingredients it can source. While there is the obvious link regarding the miles that food travels, however the more damaging problem is in fact regarding the use of palm oil in almost all processed foods. The economics are simple, palm oil, freshly processed from Indonesia sells for less than .09 pence (20 cents US) per kilo. Thus as would any business, the food industry uses palm oil by the tonne (many million tonnes), as a way of maximising profits. Something that all businesses are legally required to do for the benefit of shareholders.

While all the talk in the media has been about palm oil as a bio-fuel, an alternative to petrol and diesel. What people are failing to recognise is that there already is a very high demand for palm oil from the food industry. Also it has to be said, most soap is made with palm oil. The brand Palmolive takes his name quite simply from the fact that it is made from 90per cent Palm Oil and ten percent Olive Oil. I am not singling out that particular brand as almost all soap is made using Palm Oil.

Therefore, in relation to climate change, the bio-fuel industry will have a tough time sourcing enough palm oil. While this commodity pressure should be good prices, the reverse is actually the reality. This is because vast areas of rain forest is being felled and replanted with palm oil. In Borneo half of the rain forest has been lost in the last fifteen years. While some NGOs are saying that this has happened in the last ten years, but I am quoting and relying on official figures here.
While the governments of Borneo and Papa New Guinea, are trying to stop this happening the planters are getting in the illegal loggers and clearing the land. It has also happened by burning down the forest, but as the timber can be sold even as illegally felled timber, the companies that create the plantations are creating clear land. The governments then agree to this now cleared land being planted with palm oil.

This is creating an oversupply, that is depressing the price of the palm oil. Additionally because of the loss of government revenues from managed and sustainable logging that the illegal logging, it is no wonder that the governments agree to these new plantations being established. These are developing countries who do not have the resources to replant the forests.

There are other financial and social impacts from the use of palm oil by the western food industry. As many of the peoples that live on and around the land where the plantations are established are predominantly creating and deriving their livelihoods from the forests, they loose their means of existence. Often these indigenous peoples are not earning money or generating monies by this hunting and gathering, their needs are ignored. However, without their traditional lives, they then become a burden on the state as they become jobless even homeless.

This is the reality of our so called cheap food in the UK and the west. Furthermore we already have many other fats and oils that could be used in manufacturing these processed foods are available. Olive oil, Grape seed oil are but two and they are considered beneficial for health. They are not used not because they are drastically more expensive but because they can not be manipulated to greatly extend shelf life. That also raises a question about how fresh our food really is, but I may tackle that at a later date. However, with all the problems of obesity that we face in the western world, in my mind at least it makes me wonder if the prolific use of palm oil in our foods is part of the problem? That said what is clear is that precessed food is a significant contributing factor in deforestation.

While this posting has focused upon the unknown or ignored aspects of why our food industry and our eating habits are significantly adding to deforestation, and our changing climate, as in Borneo deforestation is placing the Orang-utan at serious risk of extinction. All this as a direct result of our demand for palm oil. Climate change affects us all, in ways that most people don't understand or realise, from the poor displaced peoples in Indonesia to the rise in obesity in the west. That is why conservation is really important for all our futures.

As climate change is a reality we all need to send signals to the food industry and stop them supporting, indirectly, illegal logging and directly other unethical business practises.

Education Is De-skilling our Children

Earlier on today I was drafting out a posting on a completely different topic, but as today is Shrove Tuesday, the topic I was writing about reminded me that in the village store I had seen an instant pancake mix. My initial reaction was that surely people know how to make pancakes?
However, I realised that actually it is quite likely that people don't. Further, I realised why this was and it is in fact at the root of many of the social problems that exist today. Back when I was at school even us boys were expected to do one term of cooking. It had the fancy title of Home Economics, but basically it was simply cookery. I enjoyed it and predominantly by teaching myself, I learned how to cook. I am not perfect, even now I can get my timing wrong and I have served starters after the main course!

However I went to school just as the industrial age was ending. No matter what your real talent was the schools then were churning out factory workers. Or so they thought, during my last two years at school on the bus I would pass the factories where I was expected to work. Yet in those two years I saw factory after factory close. I was fortunate as I got a job in a Horticultural Nursery, very poor wages, but a job.

The certainties of the whole basis of the education system just fell away. The education system then emphasised, even more than it had previously, that exams were the way to go. When I left school O-levels were what was required. Then the emphasis was pushed onto A levels, (the equivalent of a high school diploma). Now all the emphasis is on getting a degree.

What has been lost in this overly academic thrust in the education system is the chance to experience different subjects, especially the practical ones.

That's the base of this triangle, another aspect is the number of women that are now working. This is not an anti-feminist rant, the fact that a woman is just as good as a man in any job has been proved time and again. However, this change has not come as a choice that women are free to make as most of the time women have to work just to make ends meet. When I was a child on the news you would hear about “A Family Wage”, now even two young working professionals together struggle to afford to live on a joint salary. Therefore, parents are so busy working that they don't have the time to pass on the skills of cooking. Additionally, the food industry and the supermarkets are tricking us into buying all these highly processed convenience foods. Further undermining the confidence of people in their abilities to cook.

Finally is the hype that is marketed to us about what we should be consuming and the lifestyle we should be leading. In the developed western world, while we are all richer, anxiety and depression rates are at an all time high.

I don't know first hand what the situation is like in the US, as an example, but here in Britain very few families sit down at the table for a meal. More often than not, its a plate on the lap in front of the television. Further, sometimes because of shift patterns or other commitments different members of the family are eating at different times.

While I am not advocating that it should be the woman that does the cooking, when I was married I did most of the cooking. But the loss of household skills and the reliance on “Fast Junk Food” is de-skilling a whole generation. This all impacts upon the loss of social cohesion, as a family sitting around a table eating and talking builds bonds, while eating microwave mush in front of the television just deadens the mind.

It would have been all to easy to have dismissed the appearance of an instant pancake mix on the shelves of the local store as people being lazy, but its really the loss of skills and the confidence to try that enables the food industry to make and market products like this successfully. When I first started to cook, I made my own recipe book. Pancakes was the first recipe I wrote in the book.

Personally I would encourage everyone to make their own. Apart from it being way cheaper than this manufactured junk, it can also be fun.

Here's the Recipe:

3oz (75g) of flour
¼ pint (150ml) of milk
One Egg (Medium or Large)

Mix the milk with the flour until you have a smooth paste. Season to taste with salt and pepper, beat in the egg, you should have a pouring paste but you can add extra milk to make a pouring paste.

It really is that simple, but if you have never been shown or had the opportunity to learn, well now is your chance.

What is particularly crazy about all this processed food is that it all contributes to climate change. The factories that create this stuff use far more energy per portion that you would do in your own home manufacturing it, then with child and frozen food its all kept in open chillers in the supermarkets. Add in the energy used to transport it around and the economics of processed foods start to look crazy.

It is worth noting that the supermarkets don't sell convenience foods for our benefit, while they may say they are offering choice, really they do it because they make more profit on these foods.

Therefore save money and save the planet by learning how to cook.

If the list of ingredients looks like a chemistry lesson then...

This Last week for me has been very busy. The demands on my time are coming quite thick and fast. Some of these I will detail in latter postings. However there are two instances that I want to tell you folk about. Firstly, as I previously said I bought a new computer and have been busy setting this up. As I have needed to add hardware and software, I do this an item at a time test it before adding the next bit. This is far more time consuming than just putting it all together and hopping for the best. It has and does pay off in the long run.

However, this meant that I had lots of spare time to sit and watch the birds as they come and visit my yard. This occurred at the same time as the snows came, so I was able to see that my efforts were really worthwhile.

Then as I was awaiting the computer load some software, I went off to make some tea. On returning I suddenly realised that a Sparrow hawk was perched on the power line that runs parallel to my property. I rushed downstairs for the camera but it had gone by the time I got back, but it had been only twenty feet from my window, a real treat.

However, it doesn't end there, while out and about I missed seeing the bird again.
I had returned and noticed that two of the fat balls had been pulled off and were laying broken open on the ground. I presumed by the jackdaws, this wasn't deterring the birds as they were still feeding on them where they lay on the floor. Then a day or so latter I bumped into one of my neighbours who told me that they had seen a bird of prey, that had swooped in and (they think) took a small bird. This could be the explanation of how the fat balls were felled. As they were securely tied I had been surprised to see them on the ground. I would have loved to have seen this, but I cant be everywhere.

This has made me look carefully at where I am positioning the food so that I am not providing a bird table for the hawks.

It just shows that doing just a little can help a lot.

The other thing I wanted to talk about is food. Following the programmes on the food we are having foisted upon us, I have been even more careful about what I am buying. While I am pretty clued up, even I was appalled and revolted by what I was discovering. When I did my shopping last week I took more time to look to see if I could avoid all the foods where the practices of the food industry are unethical and unhealthy. That day I found that by avoiding the products that I would not want to eat, my bill at the checkout was seventy five percent lower.

This got me thinking, was it possible that by buying and eating ethically was cheaper?

As I had a receipt from a previous big shopping trip, this is an unexpected advantage of using reusable bags, and I looked to see if I could buy similar goods without compromising ethics and not breaking the bank either. For example, pasta that contain what is called the hidden egg. These are the broken eggs that come from battery farms. They cant be sold but go into ninety percent of the foods that contain egg. While I support free range by buying free range eggs, it looks as though I have for years been unwittingly supporting unethical farming via these products.

Additionally I wanted to avoid eating anything that was “mucked about”. I do try and eat healthy foods, so the products that are supposed to be more healthy will appear in my shopping basket. But as was shown in these programmes, most of these are still full of salt and sugar. Not only that the fats in them are far from healthy, and in the UK at least, the labelling regulations enable them to hide all the crap, more from what they don't say. While I have known for a long time that we need to read between the lines on labels, it became clear that no matter how aware you are, you can still be fooled. Therefore I am now adopting the simple rule; if the list of ingredients looks like a chemistry lesson then I am not going to buy it. On that principal I will stop buying the instant soups that you make in a mug. Looking at the ingredients in one of them, made me realise just what garbage is in them. Further, as I enjoy making soups, why not go back to what I used to do and make a big pan full when the veg is cheap and freeze some for latter.

Well I following my chemistry free approach, and I saved myself thirty five percent on my grocery bill. It has meant that I have to spend a little more time in the kitchen, but it is still fast food and I doubt that I have spent more than an extra hour in the kitchen this week. And part of that extra time has been spent cooking something special anyway.

What I did that was a bit special was as the result of actively seeking out a decent butchers. The one in the village is not that brilliant, and while the one that I had been using in Consett is reasonable, there is a lack of choice and variety. I don't understand how or why anyone would want to limit what they are prepared to eat, but locally it seems that folks will stick with eating the same limited foods day in day out. Therefore, I went looking for a better butcher, and I think I have found what I wanted.

I have two ways of telling a good butcher, the first is one that makes his (that's not being sexist its just that most butchers are men) own sausages. And if they have offal or the less popular cuts of meat available. It was the discovery that they had an ox tail available that prompted me cooking a large pan, three litres, of oxtail soup.

I also got some of the sausages, Lamb and mint, and they were a wonderful flavour. What's amazing is that a real butcher is cheaper than the supermarket anyway, and the quality is normally superior to the supermarkets anyway.

So it looks as though even with my time pressures this week, cooking and eating a healthy ethical diet is cheaper than the supermarkets would have us believe.

The Myth of Cheap Food

Before Christmas on the BBCs Farming Today, I heard a discussion about the fall in prices that hill farmers were getting for their lambs. The reasons for this are a complex collection of problems, but while I risk over simplifying the factors, they are; the increased cost of feed, the oversupply from imports, and the restrictions caused by the outbreak of Foot and Mouth.

With the restrictions on movements that the outbreak of Foot and Mouth caused, farmers were not able to move the lambs off of the hills, even when the sheep had eaten all the grass. Some farmers were able to provide supplementary feeding, but this was not always possible either due to cost or lack of feed. For these hard-pressed farmers the cost of feed was and is important as lambs are only selling at market for five pounds (Eight Dollars US) in extreme cases. The average price has been lower from twenty-eight pounds (Fifty Dollars US) per lamb to fifteen pounds (twenty-eight Dollars US) per lamb. That obviously reduces the income of farmers who are making very little to start with. Incidentally we also had two hundred and fifty thousand lambs slaughtered in what the government called a welfare cull. An oxymoron if ever I heard one.

So with falling prices at the market we the consumers are getting cheaper meat? Using misinformation the major supermarkets increased prices for lamb. This brings me to what I heard on the radio. One of the farming groups looked at the price of the cuts of meat from the lamb and by reconstructing a lamb from the cuts of meat they worked out that the average price of the meat was about five pound fifty per kilo, ten times the price the supermarkets were paying for the carcass. That also represents an increase of nearly twenty percent on the price that consumers are paying.

So I carried out the same exercise and again after Christmas to ensure that it was not just a hike in price for the holiday season. I found the same prices myself.

Environmentally, this is a disaster. If farmers can no longer stay in business we lose the custodians of our landscape. The countryside only looks the way it does because of the way those farmers manage the land. Further, particularly on the hills, it is only because of grazing that the habitats for much of the wildlife exists.

In the past and I am only talking ten to fifteen years ago, subsides meant that farmers could only afford to farm the hills by overstocking the hills, this lead to large-scale erosion and environmental degradation. Fortunately the way support was paid was changed and this dramatically improved the situation and reversed the problem. What the supermarkets are doing will destroy ten years of hard work.

Additionally the way that the supermarkets protect their margins by dictating to farmers the price they will pay for meat, means that farmers can only make farming pay by increasing the number of animals on any farm and reducing the welfare standards for the livestock. Most farmers do care about their animals, but farmers are often forced to cut corners to make farming pay. The supermarkets know this but hide behind systems that are supposed to ensure welfare standards.

If we look at chicken as an example, where the birds are regularly feed antibiotics to grow faster and fatter, this practice has caused antibiotic resistance and has major implications on human health. Further, having large concentrations of any animal in a small area creates pollution. Farming always used to be exemplars of recycling, as nothing was waste it all had a use on the farm.

Had farming and particularly factory farming had to pay for the pollution it created, then food prices would double at least. Yet we still have to pay for this, indirectly by higher water bills and higher taxes. Also as the supermarkets will utilise anything that can be considered food, take the example of mechanically recovered meat, while they make billions in profit, they are poisoning our children and us.

While that trolley may be full of cheap food from the supermarket there is a hidden cost.





My gratitude to Fran Purdy for the kind permission to use her magnificent picture of the Ewe and Lamb taken on the Yorkshire hills, her website can be found at www.pbase.com/jenga