The magazine of the Food Ethics Council Caterin g f o r e t h i c s ? The eating out guide Emma Roe | Marc Higgin | Alan Maryon-Davis | Neville Rigby | Tony Royle Donald Sloan | Julia Hailes | Jeanette Orrey | Peter Jackson| Carlo Petrini Jeanette Longfield | Geetie Singh | Anita Goyal | Martin Forsyth Corinna Hawkes | Arthur Potts Dawson | Paul Roberts | Michael Heasman Helen Crawley | Clare Devereux | George Lindars-Hammond | Mike Rayner Winter Winter 2008 | 3 Volume Issue 4 | www.foodethicscouncil.org Contents Challenges Food Ethics, the magazine of the Food Ethics 04 Ethical consumerism Council, seeks to challenge accepted opinion and Dr Emma Roe | Marc Higgin spark fruitful debate about key issues and 09 How healthy is eating out developments in food and Dr Alan Maryon-Davis farming. Distributed quarterly to subscribers, each issue features 10 Fast food in the develping world independent news, comment and analysis. Neville Rigby The Food Ethics Council challenges 12 Work and employment government, business and the public to Dr Tony Royle tackle ethical issues in food and farming, 18 Business ethics providing research, analysis and tools to help. The Donald Sloan views of contributors to this magazine are not necessarily those of the Food Ethics Council or its members. The big question Please do not reproduce without 19 How good was your lunch? permission. Articles are copyright of the authors Jeanette Orrey | Peter Jackson | Carlo Petrini and images as credited. Unless Jeanette Longfield | Geetie Singh | Anita Goyal otherwise indicated, all other content is Martin Forsyth | Corinna Hawkes | Paul Roberts copyright of the Food Ethics Council 2008. Arthur Potts Dawson Editorial team: Ann Baldridge Solutions Liz Barling 24 Corporate responsibility Trang Du Michael Heasman Susan Kerry Bedell Tom MacMillan 27 Public procurement Helen Crawley Printed by: 29 Community catering PEP the Printers, Brighton Clare Devereux Printed on 80% post-consumer recycled paper. Produced with kind support from the Polden Puckham Charitable Comment Foundation 29 School dinners ISSN 1753-9056 George Lindars-Hammond 30 Food, faith and home Food Ethics Council Mike Rayner 39 - 41 Surrey Street Brighton BN1 3PB UK Regular features T: 0845 345 8574 or +44 (0) 1273 766 654 03 From the editor F: +44 (0) 1273 766 653 34 Book review [email protected] 35 Restaurant review www.foodethicscouncil.org Julia Hailes The Food Ethics Council, registered charity number 1101885 Cover image: © DNY59 From the editor Catering for ethics? Tom Macmillan Eating out is one of the trends most countries, where fast food is expanding How to solve these problems? Michael profoundly affecting the food system. In apace. Mass catering also comes with its Heasman (p.24) and Don Sloan (p.18) are the UK, people now spend almost as much own environmental challenges, not only confident corporate responsibility can go a on eating out as on eating at home. In in logistics, where food service prides long way, citing cases such as Bon Appétit, China, YUM! Brands alone, which owns itself on efficiency, but in things as simple an impressive US offshoot of UK giant KFC, now has a $2 billion annual as the conveyor belt that is stocked full all Compass, and McDonald’s, which has won turnover. day, whether there is one person in a plaudits for improving its animal welfare restaurant or one hundred (p.35 for Julia and environmental standards. Yet the fact Most of us know little about the industry Hailes). The visibility, overt that McDonald’s is also the focus of Tony that wields this influence but after Fast industrialisation and sheer volume of Royle’s hard-hitting critique hints at the Food Nation, Supersize Me! and Jamie’s meat sold by fast food giants has made limits of voluntary initiatives: some School Dinners it would be nonsense to animal welfare a prominent issue for that problems, such as the pressures and fault- suggest catering is ignored. However it is part of the sector. And while the biggest lines in accountability that have driven often examined in isolation and left as caterers have less overall buying power franchisees to exploit their workers, seem little more than a footnote to analysis, than the biggest supermarkets, at least in integral to the sector’s economic success. policy and public outcry about the food the UK, that power is heavily focused on Those will only be solved by stronger system as a whole. particular products. government regulation. This edition of Food Ethics is devoted to The state’s other main influence on putting that right – an eating-out guide catering, beside regulating, is as a major with a difference. We have focused on Some problems, such as buyer and provider, to the tune of £2 billion catering but kept one eye on the rest of the pressures and fault- a year in England alone. This summer’s the sector, particularly on differences Food Matters report from the UK Cabinet between the ethical challenges faced by lines in accountability Office reiterated government’s need to get caterers and grocery retailers. that have driven its own house in order. Jeanette Orrey We begin with an overview of the catering franchisees to exploit (p.19) reports on St. Andrew’s Primary or ‘food service’ industry - its size, shape their workers, seem School in Shifnal, one of hundreds of UK and diversity, and how major fast food schools transforming their whole approach companies and contract caterers have integral to the sector’s to food. For Helen Crawley (p.27), the confronted or ignored issues ranging from economic success. priority for public health is tough, detailed animal welfare to healthy eating. The nutrition-based standards for caterers, remainder of the magazine explores including clear and simple labelling. specific problems facing catering, and On top of these variants of familiar food In parallel to the top-down efforts of major solutions to them, in greater depth. issues, service comes with its own distinctive problems, both for the people caterers and government, communities are There are two sets of problems: those to doing the serving and for the consumers taking matters into their own hands. Clare do with food and those to do with service. being served. The top 10 US fast food Devereux (p.29) catalogues a host of The food problems – how it is produced chains have over 5 million workers inspiring grassroots projects including and what consuming it does to us and to worldwide and, as Tony Royle (p 12) Brighton’s 20/20 Café, based in a our environment – echo those facing documents in depth, many are underpaid, community mental health centre, which supermarkets. The problems related to overworked, at risk of injury and insecure. trains service users in catering to NVQ level service are more distinctive even though and sells healthy, sustainable and affordable developments in retail – not least ready- For consumers, the key issues with service food into the bargain. made sandwiches and the supermarket are transparency and choice. As Emma Roe The prognosis? As people tighten their café – are mingling the two sectors (p.4) argues, it is in part because contract belts and purse-strings, some together. catering is shielded from the public’s gaze, and information about nutrition and commentators envisage a shift towards The range of food problems in catering is provenance is still rare on menus, that food more home-cooking, eating more veg and much the same as for the rest of the food service on the whole lags behind grocers in less meat, with benefits for health and for industry, including public health, tackling environmental and social the planet: as The Times put it, ‘Recession environmental damage, animal welfare problems. Yet, as she also points out, could work wonders for British diet’. But in and the power they wield as bulk buyers. consumers may be partly complicit, as the Summer ’08 edition of Food Ethics, Yet there are differences on each of these many seem to “leave their ethics behind” Adam Drenowski called this notion “the counts. As Alan Maryon-Davis (p.9) when they eat out. Choice is also a mixed arrogance of privilege”, arguing that “saving reminds us, the foods we eat out of the picture: caterers have come under fire on money on food translates into cheap empty home are on average fattier, saltier and health grounds for supersizing portions, calories and eating more… obesity is the more sugary than those we eat at home, yet the brand trust and limited menu of a toxic byproduct of economic distress”. If and lower in fruit and vegetables. Neville major chain like McDonald’s places it well fast food is as recession-proof as some Rigby (p.10) considers the effect this is to ‘edit’ consumers choices in the wider pundits claim, Drenowski may sadly be having in middle- and low-income public interest. proved right. - www.foodethicscouncil.org | volume 3 issue 4 |winter 2008 3 Challenges Ethical consumerism How are caterers coping? Dr Emma Roe It is widely recognised that ethical 1999 and 20052, with Western food consumerism is driving some parts of chains like McDonald’s, Pizza hut and Lecturer in Human Geography the food retail market, as retail brands Kentucky Fried Chicken arriving on at the University of actively market products based on the high streets of major Chinese Southampton. ethical credentials (whether Fairtrade, cities. [email protected] local food, organic food or improved In the UK people may go for a meal in animal welfare) to shoppers. a sit-down restaurant, grab some fast However, this active ethical food or a takeaway, dine in hotels, have Marc Higgin consumerism is much less obvious in a meal over a drink in a pub or visit the Research Associate in the the behaviour of consumers when they canteen at work.