Ethical Food Shopping: Lower on Consumers' Agenda

Eating is essential - eating ethically may not be top of the agenda of many consumers. With prices rising, an uncertain economy, all indications are that consumers have become more price conscious than ethically minded when shopping for the basic essentials. The UK's Food Ethics Council's guide to ethical shopping has some interesting choices that it offers consumers with a guide that is both factual and informative. Here are some of the highlights of the report: -

• 
  The food and farming sector is the UK’s biggest employer, and one of its worst. Workers suffer long hours, bad pay and short term contracts. These working conditions mean they have less access to fresh, healthy food for themselves and their families. Fairly made, fairly traded food offers a decent wage and working conditions to workers and producers in the UK and abroad.
• Buying free range and organic meat means that the animals you eat led decent lives. They’re still bred for meat, egg or dairy production, but you can be happy in the knowledge that they were allowed to live well and grow at a natural rate.
• Rearing meat accounts for 8% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. It’s a thirsty business too – it takes 5,000 litres of water to produce the average amount ofmeat consumed by a person in the UK every day, compared to 2,000 litres for a vegetarian. Eating less meat and dairy and more vegetables is one way to reduce our impact on the
  planet.
• Fish stocks are perilously low, and farmed fish can destroy the sea bed. Buying Marine Stewardship Council approved fish supports businesses that fish sustainably. So shop locally for fish and ask your fishmonger how and where it was caught.
• Most of the buying power in the food industry is concentrated in a handful of big retailers. The supermarket shelves are full of “choice”, but in many cases it’s an illusion. We can only buy what the supermarkets want to sell – and producers have to grow what they want to selltoo. Who’s actually in control of our health when we buy food from big retail outlets?

The full report is on the FEC's website to read more follow the link below:- 

 http://www.foodethicscouncil.org/system/files/Theethicalshoppingguide.pdf