Back in November of last year I wrote a post: 'The great supermarket scandal.' I had taken issue with my local Waitrose, who didn't have a reduced section in their store and furthermore, weren't reducing items of food that had reached their sell-by date until very late in the day. Consequently, heaps of edible food was ending up in their bins on a daily basis. After my little chat, miraculously, a few weeks later a reduced section appeared and credit where it's due, I wrote a post: 'Food is not trash, it's life' where I praised Waitrose for embracing my concerns.
Alas, as suddenly as the reduced section appeared, it vanished, with nobody being able to give me an explanation as to why?
I have often felt that I am fighting like a one man army against the food corporations who have an overwhelming amount of power over our food supply. However, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has decided to tackle these corporations and has declared a war on waste!
Having watched the second episode of Hugh's War On Waste, I am incandescent with rage! Morrison's had driven a family of farmers to breaking point in their demand for exacting cosmetic standards and participated in a pathetic little trial where they put some substandard squashy vegetables next to some gleaming perfect ones at the SAME PRICE. Surprise surprise, customers opted for the firmer vegetables, a Morrison's spokesman then patronisingly told Hugh that customers had 'voted with their feet.' Unfortunately, customers hadn't been told the story about Morrison's rejecting, for example, Tattersett's Farms parsnips to the tune of 20 tonnes for not meeting their cosmetic standards, nor the fact that this was standard practice which is crippling farmers across the UK.
During this televised interview, two of Morrison's bigwigs, you know the type, the ones in smart suits with smarmy smiles, the ones who destroy peoples livelihoods between sips of Perrier water from high in their ivory towers, the fat cats who never get their hands dirty but receive outrageous incomes and perks, well, two of them shamelessly made no apologies regarding their contribution to colossal food waste or the destruction of farmers livelihoods and made it very clear they look only to maximise their own and their shareholders wealth!
Given that supermarkets can quite happily throw away tonnes of perfectly edible food on a daily basis and refuse to be accountable, I've come up with a game plan. Why don't we all start shoplifting rather than shopping? If the supermarkets can afford to lose so much of its produce without feeling the pinch, why not help ourselves? Better we feed ourselves with all this over supply of food than see it happlessly going to waste. I wonder what the men in suits would do if we the public started an en mass shoplifting revolution where we went in our droves and helped ourselves to food across the UK?
Hugh's war on waste is one we very desperately need to win, by whatever means necessary as far as I am concerned. We have to take responsibility as consumers to change the retailers behaviour towards both their suppliers and the contents of their rubbish bins!
'I find it very sad that by the time corporate science realises the value of nature, that it may be too late.'
- Steven Magee
'Mercilessness is not a bad trait to have in the corporate universe.'
- Soroosh Shahrivar
Love Donna xxxxxxx
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