The Planet's Food Costs

The Real Food Festival is tonight holding a debate on the cost of mass produced food to the planet.

The topical discussion comes on the heels of high profile television campaigns by celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, both campaigning for the abolition of battery farmed cheap chicken, with Delia Smith controversially weighing-in in defence of the value of £2 chickens for low-income families.

On the panel for the debate will be Giorgio Locatelli, Zac Goldsmith, Waitrose MD Mark Price, Trudie Styler, and Professor Tim ‘food miles’ Lang, Britain’s leading food policy expert amongst others.

The debate will confront some of the issues we’ll face as well as where the future of food lies. It’s unscripted with the public putting questions to the panel.

Far from being a middle-class fad, the very serious and ever stronger signs that the planet cannot sustain the demands we place on it will sooner or later affect everybody. Most probably sooner.

Restaurateurs, supermarkets and caterers are in a prime position to help guide and influence consumers to make informed and thoughtful choices. But many are ignoring the responsibilities that come with their chosen business.

Restaurants seem to be divided between passionate, bright chefs who have embraced the seriousness of the issue, and stalwarts who are paying it no heed.

The state of the oceans presents a stark example of the damage that is being done. 90 per cent of big predator fish are gone; thanks in large part to commercial fishing fleets catching and discarding something like 16 BILLION lbs of bycatch.

Sweary egotist Ramsay has managed to engage with the end product long enough to drop endangered species like bluefin tuna, as have other acclaimed establishments like New York’s Le Bernardin, which was just voted 20th in the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, but many others have failed to pick up on the example.

Nobu Matsuhisa, who claims to be ‘the world’s most famously imaginative exponent of Japanese and fusion cooking,’ yet hasn’t found a way to take the chronically over-fished Chilean sea bass off his menus.

The answers aren’t easy, and trying to do the right thing by the planet can be a minefield, but debates and restaurateurs, and some conscientious retailers are trying to plough a way forward.

Representatives of Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco were invited to take part in this evening’s debate but the offer was declined.

You can register your question on-line at www.realfoodfestival.co.uk