Guest post by Will Acker of The Ecologist.

All he wanted to know was what the policies of the ‘big four’ supermarkets were for GM foods. But what Will Acker got was the big supermarket runaround…

The UK supermarket sector is dominated by Tesco, ASDA, Sainsburys and Morrisons. These are the only chains that operate full-scale supermarkets of 40,000 sq feet or more. There are yearly fluctuations but the ‘big 4’ currently control around 75 per cent of the UK grocery market.

This places them in a position of massive influence, and leaving this responsibility with them begs an obvious question; can we trust that the food we are eating comes with an ethos that doesn’t contradict our own? For me this brings up the issue of GM foods, which I have become increasingly concerned about. Though it is something that leading supermarkets show awareness of, I wanted to know what their real stance was and what they saw GM foods having in the future of their industry?

The first place I looked was at each supermarket’s website. Tesco’s ‘Our values’ seemed a logical place to star, but I felt the two core values ‘no-one tries harder for their customers’ and ‘treat others as you wish to be treated’ didn’t really cater for my question nor did they seem (despite being handwritten on adorable post-it note graphics) to have any real meaning.

‘Buying and selling responsibly’ seemed a more promising tab, but in reality focused mainly on ethical trading and local sourcing. Eventually I found four lines concerning GM stating that all Tesco own brand food is non-GM and all GM products are labelled.

Next I went to the ASDA website. When I looked under ‘our policies’ there was a small entry for GM foods. It stated that none of the ASDA own brand products contain GM ingredients. However ASDA uses its own definition for non-GM, which is ‘something which has been produced under strictly monitored guidelines’. The specifics of these guidelines were nowhere to be found.

Finding info on Sainsburys’ corporate responsibility pages was made difficult having to navigate past the barrage of colourful fonts and waving stickmen. So I went to the search bar and typed in “GM policy’ where I had more luck. According to their policy Sainsburys has no GM in own brand food, drink, pet food, dietary supplements and floral products and offers a range of meat and dairy that is non GM, but cannot switch all meat and dairy away form those fed on GM feed, due to cost feasibility.

Disappointingly Morrisons had no mention of GM that I could find.

I wasn’t really satisfied by the information provided online. Sainsburys was the first of the ‘Big Four’ to remove all GM from its own brand products and the efforts of the others may well be nothing more than keeping up with the Jones’. In search of clarification I decided to pursue these questions on the supermarkets’ phone lines.

There were two strands to my question and I asked each supermarket exactly the same question: ‘What does your supermarket think the impact of the addition of GM species will be on the food chain and ecology of the world and what risks are posed to human health by their consumption?’

My telephone odyssey began with the general enquiries departments who usually transferred me to customer services. Customer services, in turn, were keen for me to take up my issue with the general enquiries. More used to dealing with pedestrian queries about opening times and refunds both sectors seemed flummoxed by my unusual line of questioning. None of responses I received properly answered the question I was asking; more often than not there was an inadequate coverall response which served to paraphrase the information available online.

In truth I hadn’t expected to gain much from general enquiries or customer services and from the off felt my questions needed to be raised with someone more directly involved with the policy making, who hopefully would have a keener understanding of the topic.
Sadly none of the supermarkets I phoned would give me the name of someone at head office who might have a bit more power, and a bit more of a clue.

Occasionally I managed to slip through their nets. A less vigilant customer services advisor would connect me to the head office switchboard, but head office staff, immediately sensing I was out of my territory, would direct me back to customer services. I tried a different tack. If I got through to head office I would ask to speak to the health and safety officer; health and safety being fairly out of the loop would generally not see the harm in telling me the name of the head of CSR and a second time around I would ask for them by name. The closest my tricks took me to someone who would be able to answer my questions was an answer phone.

In the end only Sainsbury’s allowed me to escalate my concerns so that they would be answered by someone more senior, my detailed question was taken down but to my dismay the posted response was a print out version of the corporate social responsibility pages.

I was shocked that there seemed no way to know what kind of organisation I was feeding my money into. I found the secrecy that surrounded the supermarket’s policies on GM disquieting. My suspicion is that a boardroom full of internal and external shareholders cannot agree on one cohesive view of the direction the company should be taking and are waiting to see how the market and consumer demands develop.

The across the board effort to remove GM from own brand products is reassuring and appears to be a step in the right direction. But I can’t shake the belief that it may well be intended to placate concerned consumers and could disguise a long term strategy whose goals are very much at odds with the public face of these companies.

It’s generally safe to say that most of us have been concerned about the environment for a long time, so why are we expanding aviation and building new coal-fired power stations? Have the lines of communication in our proudly democratic society broken down?

A few months ago I interviewed Tamsin Omond, activist and campaigner for Plane Stupid and key figure in the recently established Climate Sufragettes. When we spoke, Tamsin was on bail after being arrested, with four others, for climbing onto the roof of the House of Commons in protest of government aviation expansion plans.

On Monday 13 October, Tamsin was arrested for breaching bail conditions during not-so-subtle attempt to enter Parliament that was the Climate Rush. She was released the following day, with tighter bail conditions.

But Tamsin was only one of some six hundred people who attended that event. Only one of some six hundred people who, more notably, took direct action that day. And so we wonder, is this becoming a growing trend, this involvement of the ‘normal’ men and womenfolk in the environmental movement so traditionally reserved for ‘tree-huggers’ and ‘eco-warriors’?

During the hearing that resulted in Tamin’s most recent release, District Judge Michael Snow spoke of the need for ‘proportionality’ in such cases, and his reluctance to refuse bail to someone who was “simply exercising her democratic right to protest”. The word ‘democratic’ is key here. The idea of democracy is perhaps the key to explaining why middle-class fathers and middle-aged ladies are donning sashes and chanting slogans all of a sudden.

Watch the video ‘The New Protest Culture’, and have a think… What will you do?

Next year, at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, the world comes together to respond to the challenge of climate change. While there is still no consensus on just how hot it is going to get, if we want to insure ourselves and the Third World against a bad case scenario on the other side of the tipping point, then this will be the time to act and turn things around.

One important step towards Copenhagen is the UK Climate Change Bill, which has the opportunity to lead the world by example.

Gordon Brown hailed this year’s G8 summit, where the leaders agreed to cut CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050, as “major progress”. The change from last year’s promise to “seriously consider” a 50% reduction to this year’s promise to “consider and adopt” this reduction has Mr. Brown so enthusiastic that he has put the UK at the forefront with a 60% reduction in the coming Climate Change Bill.

While it seems noble of Mr. Brown to propose leadership with an additional 10% reduction over the G8 agreed target for 2050, this supposed visionary outlook has a blind spot: the developing world. While the industrialised world, which is responsible for the human contribution to climate change, is demanding a 50% cut in CO2 emissions in the developing world, it is itself proposing to ‘lead’ the developing world by exactly the same reduction target.

It is this lack of leadership that has the developing world, with India and China in the forefront, saying, “no, thank you.” Leading by example means that you lead the way, and therefore the developing world is demanding a 90% reduction from the industrialised world in exchange for its reduction of 50%. After all, the Third World did not have time to reap the benefits of development, so why should they pay the price for our climate mess? This thinking is outdated; we created the problem, so we must lead in solving it.

This logic has been understood by both the opposition and rebel MPs within the government, who are calling for an 80% reduction in a new amendment to the Bill. An 80% reduction in the Bill would make the UK stand out as a leader on climate change, and would mean that a more realistic deal of 90/50 per cent reductions will be possible next year in Copenhagen.

The UK Climate Change Bill is likely to be voted on in November, so now is the time to start campaigning for a UK 80% reduction target.

Related campaigns on Greenvoice:

• The Climate Rush - October 13th
• Project Climate
• Carbon Rations Now
• Global Day of Action - 6th December
• Take Responsibility for your carbon footprint
• Carbon Rationing Action Groups

Water is the foundation for human life — it is our basic and most important requirement. Yet over 1 billion people do not have access to adequate water for their basic needs. Why? There is enough water on the planet for everybody, but the UN reckons that in twenty-five years time 5 billion people will lack a decent supply of water.

Shouldn’t water be a collective right and not something that is traded and sold, sequestered and abused and polluted for mammon? Why is water ten times more expensive in Niger than it is in Manhattan — is that fair? Water should be a public good and all governments should regard it as such and protect it as they would a national park.

When I eat a tomato in January I am eating Spanish water table. I am literally eating the future of a country. In a decade or so the water table of western Andalucia will be empty and the farmers (after seeking compensation from the government) will move on leaving a barren desolate land devoid of water. When I play on a golf course in Spain I am walking across something that uses 2.3 million litres of water a day, enough for 16,000 people!

We need fewer dams, less bottled water and a more responsible attitude from our politicians to our most precious resource.

I have a suggestion for Greenvoice users. If you have a garden, get a water butt and use rain water on your plants; that in itself would save water as a garden hose uses 1,100 litres of water per hour. And if you’re feeling empowered please sign up for a water campaign or two on the site and read Anita Roddick’s book Troubled Water.

A selection of water campaigns from Greenvoice:

• Dirty aid, dirty water
• Provide safe water in Uganda
• Refill your water bottle

Sources:

Unesco Water Portal Weekly Update No. 92: Water Use
http://www.unesco.org/water/news/newsletter/92.shtml

Barcelona forced to import emergency water
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/14/spain.water

Photo by Snap®.

What are the implications of a chicken costing less than a cappuccino? How can you produce an animal to eat, get it packed and delivered to a supermarket, and make money for yourself and the retailer, for just £1.50? The answer is: focus on economics above all else, above animal welfare and above the environment. What sort of life does a pig or a cow or a chicken have when farmed in this way? What does the resulting run-off of excrement do to the fields and the community living nearby an intensive farming system? How do you keep animals alive, in a farming system that is so intensive that the average attrition rate is 11%?

These are not questions that you ask when you place your chicken or pork fillets under the grill. But it’s true that the quest for cheaper food has destroyed communities, wrecked the environment and affected human health. The reason that this still goes on, despite all the evidence, is because the companies that pursue this relentless economic strategy employ people, pay taxes, lobby governments, and keep the world going round.

Amazingly enough, there is a more serious issue. The relentless drive for economic growth through cheap food has resulted in the majority of the world relying mainly on four types of food: rice, potatoes, wheat and maize. The collapse of one of these crops would result in widespread famine and civil unrest.

We’re wobbling, at the moment, with wheat and maize riots in Mexico, Italy and Egypt. This isn’t Darfur – this is our doorstep. These are normal, middle-class people with jobs, fighting over a loaf of bread. Anyone who wants to know the effect of a population relying on one type of food, need only research the potato blight famine in Ireland in the 19th century.

As plants are more intensively farmed with more chemicals, they develop resistance, other pathogens arrive to attack them. And the response from the food industry is more chemicals.

For the World Trade Organisation (WTO), a global food industry was a no-brainer. But they didn’t think it through. Fifty years ago, diversity was a barrier to disease transmission. The average farm had more than ten crops that were all sold locally. Nowadays, with food transported long distances across borders, the rapid spread of disease is a likelihood, not a possibility. The chemical response ends up being consumed by you and me.

This year, potato blight will affect every crop in Britain, and the response from farmers, desperate to increase yields for supermarkets, that pay them for intensive production, will be a fungicide, the residue of which will be left on the product that we eat. Governments don’t care about farmers and how they farm, because there aren’t enough of them to form a big voting lobby, and because they need the economic juggernaut to keep on going.

The implication of the WTO-inspired global food industry is not just increased urbanisation, the destruction of rural communities, food travelling longer distances, animals being cruelly treated, the creation of monocultures, water courses being polluted, more chemicals in food and a rise in food allergies and soft tissue cancer – it is famine, and death.

A selection of food, farming and sustainability campaigns from Greenvoice:

• Climate Change tests Kenya’s worsening food deficit
• Change billions of lives. Including yours.
• Ending the Squander of Our Seas
• Calling on Government for a Freeze on GM
• Robbing from the Poor, Stealing from the Planet
• Food for Life Partnership
• Ugly Veggies - They have flavours too!
• Don’t Buy Battery!
• Reduce Food Catering Waste At Wimbledon
• GM Crops: The Right to Know

Photo by Greencolander.

What does this mean for the environment?

The sub prime issue will mean that the take-up for environmental improvement to homes in Europe will be reduced. When people are having trouble paying their mortgages, they will have less money to provide solar power and insulation to improve the efficiency of their homes. There is a danger that sub prime and the economy pushes out environmental concerns.

Large scale environmental projects like wind and solar projects will be tougher to finance, and investors in those projects will be few and far between.

There will be a flight to “quality” stocks with guaranteed cash flows. This may mean more money going into oil companies and retailers specialising in cheap foods, where environmental concerns and animal welfare take second place behind price. One good thing though, is that property development and real estate generally, will be more connected to the real economy.

Some countries, like Germany, will be extremely well positioned to take advantage of this economic shift because they have invested more heavily in renewables and environmental technologies.
In conclusion, sub prime will be bad for the environment because short term economic priorities will take precedence over a longer term, more enlightened approach to business.