BBC's Panorama programme last night on Supermarkets: What Price Cheap Food? made interesting viewing. If you've already read books like Joanna Blythman's Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets and Felicity Lawrence's Not on the Label there won't have been too many many surprises.
The programme asked whether we the consumers are to blame for the growth in "factory farming" in our quest for cheap food. A joke once told at the Oxford Farming Conference was "What’s the difference between a supermarket buyer and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist!"
Most people feel uncomfortable with the idea of large dairies like Nocton, but the programme pointed out that standards of animal welfare can be good on these vast farms. I think I'd rather be a cow on a well run super dairy than on a small dairy farm who's struggling to cope with the falling margins.
However I definitely wouldn't want to live next door to the vast lagoons of waste associated with factory farms. I've already pointed out in this blog that the first known case of swine flu emerged near to a pig farm that raises almost 1 million animals a year, with reports of clouds of flies coming from the manure lagoons. According to the Health Protection Agency there's been 17 deaths due to influenza this winter. Of these 14 deaths were due to H1N1 (2009), or swine flu, with a high proportion being relatively young. Most journalists seem to have ignored this story.
I've long been concerned about food miles, with supermarkets selling apples from Africa and pears from Peru. There's nothing new about this, Corporate Watch's fascinating The Power of the Supermarkets was written several years ago.
The big four (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons) are opening hundreds more supermarkets in the UK, see here for details. Don't get me wrong I, like most of us, shop in supermarkets and am amazed by the wide range of goods available. But I'm concerned about the decline in the High Street, last year almost 12,000 independent shops closed their doors. In the Panorama programme, supermarkets claimed that they were creating jobs! They're clearly not looking at the bigger picture, Corporate Watch's Checkout Chuckout quotes research which tells us when a large supermarket opens, on average there is a net loss of 276 full time jobs within a 15km zone!
What do you think?
The programme asked whether we the consumers are to blame for the growth in "factory farming" in our quest for cheap food. A joke once told at the Oxford Farming Conference was "What’s the difference between a supermarket buyer and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist!"
Most people feel uncomfortable with the idea of large dairies like Nocton, but the programme pointed out that standards of animal welfare can be good on these vast farms. I think I'd rather be a cow on a well run super dairy than on a small dairy farm who's struggling to cope with the falling margins.
However I definitely wouldn't want to live next door to the vast lagoons of waste associated with factory farms. I've already pointed out in this blog that the first known case of swine flu emerged near to a pig farm that raises almost 1 million animals a year, with reports of clouds of flies coming from the manure lagoons. According to the Health Protection Agency there's been 17 deaths due to influenza this winter. Of these 14 deaths were due to H1N1 (2009), or swine flu, with a high proportion being relatively young. Most journalists seem to have ignored this story.
I've long been concerned about food miles, with supermarkets selling apples from Africa and pears from Peru. There's nothing new about this, Corporate Watch's fascinating The Power of the Supermarkets was written several years ago.
The big four (Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's and Morrisons) are opening hundreds more supermarkets in the UK, see here for details. Don't get me wrong I, like most of us, shop in supermarkets and am amazed by the wide range of goods available. But I'm concerned about the decline in the High Street, last year almost 12,000 independent shops closed their doors. In the Panorama programme, supermarkets claimed that they were creating jobs! They're clearly not looking at the bigger picture, Corporate Watch's Checkout Chuckout quotes research which tells us when a large supermarket opens, on average there is a net loss of 276 full time jobs within a 15km zone!
What do you think?
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