Food Miles Horror Stories
Bristol Friends of the Earth member, Lesley, sends us this example:
“Having driven for 12 hours to Crieff in Scotland, from Bristol, for a two week holiday. My husband and I decided to pop into the local ‘Somerfield’ to pick up some supplies for our rented cottage. We were amazed to find local raspberries (which were grown behind our cottage in Scotland) on sell in the store, but packaged in transparent plastic containers in Bristol! We realised that Somerfield are a Bristol firm, but how much more sensible to package them in situ. The raspberries, had travelled somewhere in the region of 840 miles to be packed into little boxes, before being sold a couple of miles from where they had grown.”
Any more stories?
AB writes:
“I refer to the BBC News on Friday 8 September regarding supermarket foods and the transport issues regarding distribution. May I draw to your attention of the way Jersey and Guernsey Channel Island is sold by Sainsburys and Asda and the milk route to market.
The Milk is sold in Sainsburys as Gold Top Milk and Taste the Difference own label Jersey milk and Asda own label Jersey Milk. The bottled milk is supplied to Sainsburys and Asda by the high sounding named company Highgrove Food Distribution Ltd who are in fact a small food trading company run from an office above a shop in Wootton Bassett in Wiltshire.
The Milk is from Grahams Dairy in Stirling in Scotland where it is bottled. The milk comes from Mr Graham’s own herd of Jersey cows and other farms in the Scottish Lowlands. The milk is then transported by a third party transport company to Redditch in Warwickshire where it is stored in a cold store rented by Highgrove Food Distribution. The milk is then transported daily to the supermarket warehouse hubs and then on to the actual supermarket. Needless energy being consumed at Redditch to keep the milk chilled.
This torturous route means that milk from cows in Scotland is transported to Cornwall and the south east of England and sold in Scotland not a mile from Graham’s Dairy having first made a 600 mile round trip via Redditch.
This is absurd. Particularly as milk is usually one of the more efficiently transported products going directly to stores and avoiding the hub wharehouses. There is no reason why jersey milk is not sourced locally as I understand Morrisons do. As a dairy farmer I know that the majority of Jersey and Guernsey herds are in the South West of England so why bring milk from Scotland. The needless CO2 emissions from the lorries moving this milk is to frightening to contemplate.
I have written to Mr King and his predecessor Mr Davis at Sainsburys for an explanation but have never received a reply.
This information came from a former director of Highgrove. He also told me that a supposedly environmentally friendly product supported by Bill Oddie called White and Wild milk comes from Grahams Dairy and follows the same route. Environmentally friendly. An environmental disaster. If you look at this milk look at the dairy code that will confirm the bottling dairy. Also Sainsburys actually advertise the milk as coming from Scotland on the Taste the Difference bottles.
Also regarding Highgrove Food Distribution Ltd. I understand they also supply a probiotic milk drink to Asda that is transported from Austria! This is a product esily obtained in UK. The world has gone mad!
Please do something about this and save the world.”
May 4th, 2007 at 11:57 am
I refer to Gold Top milk sold by Sainsburys. If you want to protest about this contact Sainsburys Customer Director Gwyn Burr at gwyn.burr@sainsburys.co.uk. Gwyn is the person leading Sainsburys ‘green’ initiative!?*
March 27th, 2008 at 11:04 am
And the horror story of milk pales (no pun intended) into insignificance when compared to meat – especially with the closure of mall local abatoirs in favour of bigger businesses (for an ongoing account see Private Eye On the Farm column who expose the real culprit to be the mega-inefficient DEFRA).