Rob Edwards

Tristram Stuart: from boy pig farmer to global campaigner against food waste

from Towards Zero, October 2015

It started with a sundried tomato loaf. When Tristram Stuart was 15 years old he bought some pigs, and started feeding them food that was being thrown away by local shops, a farm and his school in Sussex.

“One morning when I was feeding my pigs I noticed a particularly tasty-looking sundried tomato loaf that used to crop up from time to time,” he recalled with relish. “I grabbed hold of it, sat down and ate my breakfast with my pigs.”

This was Stuart’s first act of what he later learned to call freeganism, the collection and eating of discarded food. It was suddenly obvious: the solution to food waste was simply to sit down and eat it rather than throwing it away.

More than 20 years on, he is now one of the world’s best known and most effective campaigners against food waste. He has written two acclaimed books, founded the campaign group, Feedback, and travelled to countries around the globe to research, publicise and sometimes solve gross examples of food waste.

He has met with ministers and key decision-makers in the UK and Europe, and is an expert adviser to the United Nations Committee on World Food Security. This month he was in to Glasgow to address the Scottish Resources Conference on his continuing crusade against the “global scandal” of food waste.

Ministers move to ban GM crops to keep Scotland ‘clean and green’

from Sunday Herald, 9 August 2015

Scotland is planning to toughen its ban on growing genetically modified (GM) crops by formally opting out of the European Union’s pro-GM farming regime.

The Scottish Government will be applying to Brussels to be excluded from approvals for GM crops across Europe. Allowing GM would threaten the nation’s “clean and green brand” and be “gambling” with its £14 billion food industry, according to Environment Minister, Richard Lochhead.

His stance has been enthusiastically welcomed by food campaigners, though some urge him to go further. Farmers and the GM industry, however, have reacted with disappointment, criticising the minister for foreclosing future options.

New European Union rules earlier this year permit member states and devolved administrations to restrict or prohibit newly approved GM crops within their territories. Countries can also apply to be exempted from a GM maize that has already been approved and six other crops awaiting approval.

Lochhead announced today that the Scottish Government intends to submit a request that Scotland is excluded from all European consents for the cultivation of GM crops. Banning GM would help protect and enhance the reputation of Scotland’s beautiful natural environment, he said.

A right to food not foodbanks, says campaign group

from The National, 16 March 2015

Scotland should be aiming to get rid of foodbanks by enshrining a right to food in law and ending food poverty, say campaigners.

Backed by experts, political leaders and the Church of Scotland, the new sustainable food group, Nourish Scotland, is launching a campaign for everyone to have a legal right to food. This should enable foodbanks to ”disappear from Scotland like snow off a dyke”, it suggests. 

UK proposals to expand the foodbank network for handouts to the hungry are rejected as “deeply flawed” because they cannot solve the problem. The poor should not have to depend on charity and waste food that others don’t want, the group says.

Nourish Scotland was set up as a community company in 2012 to “to create a fairer and more sustainable food system in Scotland”. Part-funded by the Scottish Government, it’s headed by Pete Ritchie, an organic farmer in Lamancha, south of Edinburgh.

He pointed out that tens of thousands of Scottish households worry every week about having enough food to eat. “We think everyone in Scotland should have the right to a decent diet – enough good food for them and their family to be healthy,” he said.

“Food banks are not a solution. Even in countries like Canada where they’ve been going for 30 years, they only serve a fraction of the people who are hungry. We want an approach to hunger and food insecurity based on rights, not charity.”

Call for radical overhaul of food policy in an independent Scotland

for Sunday Herald, 07 September 2014 

The power of the multinational food industry should be broken by a radical transformation of how Scotland produces and consumes food after independence, according to a new report.

Amongst 23 proposals to begin fundamentally changing Scottish food policy, are vegetables on prescription, tax breaks on vegetarian meals and rent-free shops for local greengrocers. There are also measures to encourage people to grow their own food, to support small farmers and to cut food waste.

The report for the Common Weal movement comes as food companies launch Scottish Food and Drink Fortnight this weekend to celebrate their economic successes. It has been written by a leading food expert, Pete Ritchie, the director of the sustainable food campaign, Nourish Scotland. 

The report argues that the industry’s emphasis on boosting food production for export needs to be replaced by “sustainable nutrition”. The aim is for people to take ownership of the food system so that more food can be grown and eaten locally.

This is the best way to reduce dependence on food banks, improve poor diet and cut climate pollution, the report says. It compares the task of transforming the food market now to the creation of the National Health Service in the 1940s.

19 chickens every square metre: the cost of cheap supermarket food

from Sunday Herald, 02 March 2014

Farmers are cramming millions more chickens into industrial sheds in order to meet supermarket demands for ever-cheaper food, a Sunday Herald investigation can reveal. 

Growing multitudes of birds are being packed into mass meat production facilities because High Street retailers want smaller, younger chickens to sell to customers at lower prices. As many as 19 chickens or more are being squeezed into every square metre of floor space, which some experts say will cause them pain and stress.

Farmers and supermarkets, however, deny that their increasingly intensive production methods are cruel. They point out that animal welfare standards conform to the food industry’s assurance scheme and are much better than they used to be.

But according to Tim Lang, a professor of food policy at City University in London and a former government advisor, chickens have the most miserable lives on farms. “Probably no animal farmed intensively on earth has a shorter, more captive or controlled life than the broiler chicken,” he said. 

“A luxury item six decades ago has become routine tasteless, so-called meat today. And now we witness this new shift to even shorter lives, driven by market changes.”

Chefs demand an end to the ‘idiocy’ of electric fishing for razor clams

from Sunday Herald, 22 December 2013

Hundreds of tonnes of shellfish are being illegally electrocuted around Scotland’s shores by fishing boats trying to make a fast buck – and it’s got to end.

That is the blunt message this weekend from celebrity chefs and food experts, who are demanding a tough government crackdown on electro-fishing for razor clams. “This idiocy must stop,” they declare in a joint letter to the Sunday Herald (see below).

Shocking the seabed forces razor clams out of their burrows so that thousands can be harvested relatively easily. But it also kills marine wildlife, breaking the spines of fish, causing internal bleeding and respiratory failure.

The fishing industry, however, wants the practice to be legalised, though only after further research and under proper regulation. For their part, Scottish ministers promise they will tighten the licencing rules for razor fishing. 

Razor clams (Ensis) are regarded as a gourmet delicacy, and have a soft, sweet flesh much favoured by chefs. There is a lucrative market for them across Europe and in the Far East.

‘Alarming’ increase in fruit treated with toxic pesticides

from Sunday Herald, 13 October 2013

by Rob Edwards and Nash Riggins

A huge rise in the use of toxic pesticides on Scotland’s famed strawberries, raspberries and other soft fruits has sparked fears for human health and the environment.

The latest survey for the Scottish government reveals that the amount of all pesticides applied per hectare by soft fruit growers, centred in Angus, leapt by 38% between 2010 and 2012.

Much of the increase was in fungicides to try and prevent rot in wet weather. But there was also a 36% jump in the use of chlorpyrifos, an organophosphate insecticide that can damage the nervous system and kill wildlife.

The increases were described as “alarming” by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, while the Soil Association, which certifies organic food, warned of potential risks to health. The pesticides industry, however, accused them of trying to “scare” people.

Over 1,500 hectares of Scotland were planted with strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, blackberries and other soft fruits in 2012, more than four-fifths of them in Angus. As much as 96% of the entire crop was treated with at least one pesticide, including fungicides, insecticides, herbicides and biological control agents.

Organic food slump ends as sales start to rise again

from Sunday Herald, 01 September 2013 

It’s boom time again for organic food in Scotland. After four years of decline, new figures suggest that shoppers are now starting to buy more pesticide-free groceries.

According to the Soil Association, which certifies organic food, sales in Scotland have risen nearly six per cent over the last year. There has been a smaller four per cent rise in the rest of the UK.

The increase is attributed to growing disillusionment with conventionally produced food in the wake of the horsemeat scandal, which saw two men arrested last week. Improving economic conditions, better marketing and the arrival of popular new stores like Whole Foods Market from the US have also helped.

The latest figures, released today, show that over 12 weeks to 9 June, spending on organic food in Scotland was £13.4 million. This compares to spending of £12.7 million in the same period last year.

Spending in the rest of the UK for the same period has risen from £179.9 million in 2012 to £187.4 million in 2013. This follows four years in which the total annual UK spending on organic food fell 22% from a peak in 2008.

Scotland could meet its climate targets by eating better

from Sunday Herald New Era magazine, 16 June 2013

Simply changing the food we eat could enable Scotland to stop breaching its targets to cut climate pollution, according to a new analysis backed by experts.

By eating more local organic food, wasting less and composting more, people could prevent hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon emissions and rescue the nation’s faltering reputation on tackling global warming.

Statistics released by the Scottish government earlier this month revealed that, for the second year running, Scotland has failed to meet the legal targets it set itself to reduce carbon emissions. Emissions in 2011 were 848,000 tonnes over the target.

But a new report for the award-winning Fife Diet estimates that the scheme’s 5,000 members saved 990 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2012-13. If everyone in Scotland made similar changes to their food habits, maybe a million tonnes of carbon could be saved.

The report says that most of the carbon savings came from eating organic food, which is produced using less energy. Major savings also came from buying more locally grown food, throwing away less and composting more to produce natural fertiliser (see table below).

Lochhead accused of “spineless sell-out” on bee pesticides

28 April 2013

A new compromise plan by Scotland’s environment minister, Richard Lochhead, to agree - but not implement - a ban on the pesticides blamed for killing bees has been condemned as a “complete fudge” and a “spineless sell-out” that could help usher in “ecological Armageddon”.

Scientists, beekeepers, environmental groups, and politicians reacted angrily yesterday to a bid by the Cabinet Secretary for two years more research before deciding whether or not to restrict the use of nicotine-based nerve poisons used by farmers to kill insects and protect crops.

Lochhead has written to UK ministers urging them to accept proposed European restrictions on neonicotinoid pesticides, due to be discussed in Brussels tomorrow. But he said that the restrictions should only be implemented in 2015 if further evidence proves that bees are being harmed. 

The pesticides have already been banned in France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia, and by major retailers in the UK. The proposed European restrictions, which look likely to go ahead, have been backed by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee.

Lochhead, however, argued that the science was not clear-cut. “Given the lack of conclusive evidence I think it would be sensible to carry out a further programme of research over the next two years,” he said.

How wildlife has suffered from Scotland’s £575m farming subsidies

from Scottish Wildlife magazine, March 2013

Lapwings used to be one of those birds that defined the countryside. They were always there, swooping and flocking, flashing black and white in the air, racing across the ground, or standing crested and proud.

Their loud, liquid ‘pee-wit’ call was the soundtrack to every lowland walk. Sometimes, during the nesting season, they would become impossible to ignore as they sought to protect their chicks by dive-bombing anyone who came close. 

These days, however, you have to be lucky to see lapwings. According to the government wildlife agency, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), their population in Scotland has crashed by more than 50% over the last ten years.

Distressingly, the same could be starting to happen to another of the birds that has characterised the countryside – skylarks. They have declined 14% over the last decade, says SNH, particularly in the last couple of years.

There is also evidence that kestrels and rooks have suffered, along with other animals, insects and plants. Specialist species of butterflies decreased by 48% between 1979 and 2007, according to a 2010 report by the Rural Policy Centre at the then Scottish Agricultural College.

The feature that all these species have in common is that they live on farmland, suggesting that farming has been eroding biodiversity. There are other species that seem to have done better, like swallows and goldfinches, but experts think that the overall trend could be downwards, and that changing agricultural practices must take a share of the blame.

Revealed: how the Scottish government sold out to supermarkets on food waste

from Sunday Herald, 17 March 2013

A high-profile Scottish government campaign to cut food waste had to be soft-pedalled to avoid offending the big supermarkets, a document leaked to the Sunday Herald reveals.

Campaign staff were forbidden from advising shoppers to buy less food or to ignore ‘buy one get one free’ (BOGOF) offers because Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco were “extremely sensitive about this subject”. Winning their co-operation for the campaign had been “very difficult”, says an internal briefing.

Environmentalists have accused ministers of “selling out” to big business at the expense of pollution and waste. “You wonder which campaign will be neutered next in the supermarkets' BOGOF deal with the government,” said Dr Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland. 

The campaign, launched by the environment minister, Richard Lochhead MSP, last October, included TV, radio and newspaper adverts, social media and a travelling supermarket roadshow. The aim was to try and prevent people throwing away up to a fifth of their food, which is reckoned to cost Scotland a massive £1 billion a year.

Over two months, teams were recruited to staff stalls at major branches of Asda, Sainsbury’s and Tesco in Glasgow, Paisley, Falkirk, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness and elsewhere. They were equipped with branded bodywarmers, baseball caps and iPads and told to “engage as many people as possible”. 

The strapline for the campaign was “shop smarter, waste less, save more.” But according to the official 69-page briefing for staff obtained by the Sunday Herald, they had to play down the central message for fear of upsetting the supermarkets.

Ministers under fire for promoting food packaging

from Sunday Herald, 17 March 2013

Scottish ministers have been accused of surrendering to the propaganda of the £11 billion packaging industry by forming a partnership that promotes food wrappings.

A government website aimed at encouraging people to waste less food waxes lyrical about the benefits of packaging – and it is backed by the industry’s Packaging Federation. “Food loves the packaging it comes in,” the website says.

“There’s nothing better to protect it and keep it fresher for longer. From ziplocks on cheese packs to breathable fruit and veg bags, it has been cleverly designed with all sorts of cunning features.”

But according to the Green MSP, Alison Johnstone, this will confuse the public. “Most waste information urges you to try and avoid over-packaging of fresh food, not tell you how brilliant it is,” she said.

Ministers under pressure to ban pesticides blamed for killing bees

from Sunday Herald, 03 March 2013 

Scottish ministers are under mounting pressure to defy the Westminster government and back a European ban on toxic pesticides blamed for killing bees.

A powerful coalition of environmental groups is urging the Scottish environment secretary, Richard Lochhead, to support a move by the European Commission to restrict the use of nicotine-based nerve agents designed to kill insects that prevent crops from growing.

Their campaign has been backed by the Scottish National Party MEP, Alyn Smith, who is calling on his party colleagues at Holyrood to change their minds. To use incomplete science as an excuse for delaying a ban is a “shoddy lobbying tactic”, he said.

So far Lochhead has steadfastly supported the UK government’s rejection of a ban, stressing that there are “gaps” in the science and concerns for farmers. But the Sunday Herald understands that some of his senior officials now regard restrictions as inevitable. 

Environmentalists point to more than 30 scientific studies suggesting that the pesticides are harming bees and other wildlife, including some from Scottish universities. Bees and other pollinating insects like bumblebees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies are vital to the production of food, and are reckoned to be worth £43 million a year to the Scottish economy.

Food fraud scandal needs tough action

Comment from Sunday Herald, 17 February 2013

The possibilities for food fraud today are endless. As well as substituting horsemeat for beef, whiting can be used instead of cod, sea trout instead of salmon, and cheaper varieties of potato instead of the revered King Edward.

Food can be adulterated by adding water to chicken breasts or fruit juices, or mixing coffee husks in with beans, or adding glycerol to wine. Companies can pretend that beef came from Britain instead of South America, label farmed fish as wild and try and pass off conventionally produced food as organic.

All these things have happened. The possibilities for duplicity and misrepresentation go on and on, and a litany of apologies and promises do nothing to assuage public concern. People aren't losing trust in the industrialised, multinational food chain - they have already lost it. Little wonder then that consumers who can afford it are increasingly turning to known local producers.

Whatever we might wish, the international food industry is not going to wither away. It must be policed, and policed hard by tough, well-resourced, independent regulators, rather than by itself, as increasingly seems to be the case. 

That's why our revelations today that food safety sampling has dropped by one-third over the last four years, as meat inspectors and environmental health officers have lost their jobs, is particularly disturbing. It only adds to the toxic mix that these reductions in sampling and job losses have come about because of public sector cuts.

Among all the priorities of government, surely ensuring the integrity of the food its citizens eat is one of the highest?

Fears of more horsemeat scandals as food safety tests fall by a third

from Sunday Herald, 17 February 2013 

The sampling of food to ensure that it’s safe to eat has plummeted by more than a third in Scotland over the last four years, as safety inspectors have lost their jobs and public spending has been slashed.

An investigation by the Sunday Herald has uncovered steep declines in the testing and inspection regimes meant to prevent frauds like horsemeat being sold as beef. Experts are warning that such scandals could happen again, and politicians are demanding urgent action.

The revelations come as the crisis in the multinational food industry triggered by the discovery of horsemeat in beefburgers continues to escalate. Last week saw police raids on meat plants in England and Wales, three arrests, a string of new meat products withdrawn by supermarkets and horsemeat in school and hospital food. 

An unauthorised drug known as bute was detected in some horsemeat, and Investigations were launched across Europe to try and identify exactly who was guilty of passing horsemeat off as beef. A French company, Spanghero, was implicated by the French government.

As governments, regulators, supermarkets and meat processors struggle to restore consumer confidence, one of the crucial emerging questions is how the public are protected from food fraud and abuse. The answer is that protection is steadily being stripped away.

Scottish government fails to ban pesticide blamed for poisoning bees

from Sunday Herald, 23 December 2012

The Scottish government has come under fierce fire for failing to ban pesticides that are blamed for poisoning bees and threatening Scotland’s £100 million soft fruit industry.

The environment minister, Richard Lochhead MSP, has refused to outlaw the use of nicotine-based toxic chemicals used by farmers to kill insects that damage crops. This is despite mounting scientific evidence that the toxins harm bees, which pollinate strawberries, raspberries and other soft fruits.

The 30,000-member Scottish Wildlife Trust is now launching a campaign to ban the pesticides, known as neonicotinoids. Trust officials met with Lochhead earlier this month, but came away frustrated by his failure to act.

“We are extremely disappointed with the Scottish government’s response to our call for a moratorium on neonicotinoids,” said the trust’s head of policy, Dr Maggie Keegan.

“We urge the government to adopt the precautionary principle and ban these chemicals until there is convincing scientific evidence that pollinator populations are not significantly harmed.”

The trust warned that delaying a ban could have a “devastating” impact on pollination, which is economically vital, particularly to the soft fruit growing industry. Neonicotinoids already face bans or restrictions in France, Germany and Italy, but not in the UK.

The chemicals are made by multi-national pesticide companies to paralyse insects by attacking their nervous systems. With sales of over £1 billion a year they are the world’s most widely used insecticide, and are applied to 10% of Scotland’s crop-growing land, mostly to protect oil seed rape.

Move to defy Westminster to protect soil

for Sunday Herald, 02 December 2012

Scottish councillors have defied the UK government in a bid to prevent soils across Europe from being damaged by developers, farmers and pollution.

A European Union committee agreed on Friday to push for the introduction of a new law to force countries to protect their soils so they can grow more food, contain climate-wrecking carbon, control floods and limit landslides.

But the move, led by the Labour leader of Stirling Council, Corrie McChord, flies in the face of Westminster, which has long opposed a European directive on soils. “I don’t agree with the UK’s views on this,” said McChord. “There is an urgent need for action.”

With the expert help of the Scottish Environment Protect Agency (Sepa), McChord won the backing of the 350-strong Committee of the Regions in Brussels for a report urging tougher legal measures to protect soils. “I hope this will kickstart the argument, and help break the logjam,” he told the Sunday Herald.

New bid to tackle Scotland’s £1bn food waste

from Sunday Herald, 07 October 2012 

Throwing away food costs Scotland a massive £1 billion a year, and has prompted a new campaign by Scottish ministers to try and persuade people to cut back on waste.

As much as one fifth of the food and drink people buy ends up being dumped in the bin, costing the average Scottish household £430 a year. Yet most of it could be eaten or drunk.

Top of the most-wasted league are the 70,000 tonnes of drinks dumped down the sink, worth about £140 million. Then there’s the 62,000 tonnes of fresh vegetables, the 46,000 tonnes of baked goods and the 34,000 tonnes of fresh fruit that are annually discarded (see table below).

According to the Scottish government, nearly 400,000 tonnes of the food thrown out every year can be avoided. And householders could save themselves £35 a month by reducing their waste.

Wasting food also has a high environmental cost. Most of it is dumped as landfill and rots to produce methane and other greenhouse gases that are disrupting the climate around the globe. 

This week ministers are launching a renewed drive to get people to buy less, cook less and waste less. The key, they say, is better household planning, improved storage and smarter shopping.

Bumblebee group in bitter row over pesticides

from Sunday Herald, 29 July 2012 

A major bee conservation group in Scotland has become embroiled in a bitter row for failing to back a ban on nicotine-based pesticides blamed for killing bees.

The Bumblebee Conservation Trust, based at the University of Stirling, is facing calls for the resignation of its newly-appointed chairman, Professor Michael Usher, and criticism from its founder over its cautious stance.

One reason the trust has refused to support a ban is revealed in a paper agreed at the last meeting of trustees in May. “If we take an aggressive campaigning stance then we risk reputational/relationship damage with government and, importantly, with farmers,” it said.

Neonicotinoids are a group of toxic chemicals designed to paralyse insects by attacking their nervous systems. With annual sales globally of over £1 billion, they are used on four million acres of crops in the UK to protect them from pests. 

Scientific evidence that they are harming bees has been mounting, with a series of studies linking neonicotinoids to the “colony collapse disorder” that has decimated bee populations worldwide. According to beekeepers, more than ten million honeybee colonies have died since 1992.