Welcome

In March 2009 the Food Ethics Council commissioned an Inquiry into Food and Social Justice. Alongside this Inquiry nef (the new economics foundation) is undertaking a research project called ‘An Institutional Analysis of Social Justice within the UK Food System’. In addition, The Food Ethics Council and nef have established a joint Initiative on Food and Social Justice to raise awareness and create a shared network of expertise relevant to the two projects.

The Food and Social Justice Initiative aims to put fairness and human rights at the heart of efforts to promote sustainable food and farming. Through this initiative we want to make it impossible to talk credibly about food policy, public health and/or sustainable food without putting social justice at centre stage. The initiative will run until June 2010.

The food and drink sector in the United Kingdom turns over £172bn a year, accounts for 7% of national output, employs 3.7 million people and encompasses the UK’s largest manufacturing industry as well as its farms and fisheries. It feeds 61 million of us, probably more adequately and more reliably, and certainly with more variety, than we have ever been fed before.

But, for all its effectiveness, this system is unsustainable. Here in the UK it is environmentally damaging, resource hungry, inequitable and heavily dependent on a ‘flexible’, low-wage workforce. The UK food system is inextricably dependent on global supplies of cheap labour, raw materials and finished imports, as well as on the land and water located elsewhere that are used to produce our food. This global reach enables us to export many of the negative impacts to countries with lower standards of worker, animal and environmental protection than apply in Europe. Moreover, while one billion people worldwide do not have enough to eat, another billion are obese: in other words, even in crude calorific terms one third of the planet’s population is ill-served by existing food systems.

The environmental challenge this presents is increasingly well understood, the focus of industry commitments, efficiency drives, regulatory measures and global agreements. The social consequences are also well-documented: they include rising levels of chronic, diet-related disease and malnutrition; unfair treatment for workers, sometimes ending in injury or death; and hardship for suppliers squeezed by lower prices yet asked for higher standards. But the social challenge – to build a food system that feeds people fairly and sustainably is often neglected.

It is this neglect that the Food and Justice Initiative seeks to address.