Don't wait for supermarkets to end food waste scandal

“All the world's nearly one billion hungry people could be lifted out of malnourishment on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe,” says Feeding the 5,000, a campaign group which is pioneering food recycling.

Tesco – the UK’s largest supermarket – admits that 28,500 tonnes of food waste were generated in its stores and distribution centres in just six months. And this is only part of the 15 million tonnes of food which is thrown away in the UK each year.

Is this a new and startling reality?  

Well, yes and no. Years ago, I remember a speaker from the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) explaining to pupils at my school that it was totally possible to feed all the hungry mouths on the planet with existing resources.

So the bigger question is why is that instead of such an elemental problem being solved, in the age of super technology, humanity is still struggling with it?

Campaigners are trying to get supermarkets to revise their attitudes to their products – such as sending food past its “best-by” dates to charities and food banks.

That seems sensible, but relying on corporations for whom food is a commodity to be sold for a profit can’t solve the problem, which goes deeper than how food is marketed and sold.

At a basic level, we are alienated from the very substances that keep us alive. Instead of seeing the lettuce leaves, apples, meat, fish and bread as precious products developed from nature by our fellow human beings, most see them as little more than useful commodities.

We have long lost the connection with the land and soil on which they grow and the people who tend the crops. We prefer not to think about how “free range” eggs are collected by cheap labour or how animals are kept and slaughtered.

We don’t think about the end destination of plastic, polystyrene and packaging used to attract children to dangerous sweets and to make us buy more and more.

Felix Preston, in a briefing paper produced for the Chatham House think tank, calls for “a fundamentally new model of industrial organisation”. He proposes a “circular economy” or “CE”.

Instead of seeing “waste” as something simply to be discarded, a circular economy would “transform the function of resources in the economy”. These proposals chime in with the aim of a zero waste approach now advocated by some municipal authorities and governments as well as ecological campaigners.

Of course, the hope is that corporate capitalism will adopt the circular economy approach because it is good for business. CE would “offer huge business opportunities”, according to its supporters.  

But what is needed is something different. The for-profit market-growth model must always prioritise its shareholder returns. Yes, some capitalists are much more far seeing than others. Yes, they may even believe the greenwash they churn out through their clever publicists.

But as the recent scandal with egg production in the UK shows, the bottom line for most companies is that they want to maximise their profits.

Preston’s proposals, he says, “requires systemic changes that go beyond the individual firm. They must be embedded in partnerships and networks of companies”, and would require a collaborative, information-sharing approach.

This is definitely not possible within the capitalist framework of production and exchange, driven by market share and maximising dividends.

Resolving the problem of waste is indeed possible. It makes the transition from a for-profit capitalist economy to a co-operative, collaborative, shared-ownership system more urgent than ever.

One of the greatest scourges of humanity -  hunger and malnutrition – could be overcome if humanity could open up an alternative path where eating, like heating, comes before profit.

Corinna Lotz

Useful links: http://www.thinkeatsave.org/

http://www.feeding5k.org/food-waste-facts.php

http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/fast-facts-food-waste

http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/wrap-and-circular-economy

http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/Research/Energy,%20Environment%20and%20Development/bp0312_preston.pdf

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10393981/Tesco-food-waste-Why-half-of-your-shopping-basket-may-end-up-in-the-bin.html

'Slavery' behind the food on your table

In the two years since the global crisis erupted, conditions in Spain for migrant workers from Morocco, West Africa and Eastern Europe that were already appalling have deteriorated further.

The crisis has driven unemployment in Spain to 20%, forcing Spanish workers to compete for work in the huge plastic-covered farms which grow salad and vegetables destined for sale in all the major supermarkets in Britain and other parts of Europe.

As the recession and inflation bites into living standards across the world, and the cost of competition amongst the supermarkets like Tesco and Sainsbury drives their buyers to put the squeeze on the price they pay to farmers, payments to the workers have been reduced to less than half of the legal minimum wage.

Research by investigative journalist Felicity Lawrence and charities reveals that migrants in Almeria, adjacent to the main tourist destination of the Costa del Sol, with families left at home dependent on their wages are now living in unbelievable squalor.

They live in “chabolas”, shelters made from used vegetable boxes covered in plastic, without food, water or work. Increasing numbers are reduced to taking handouts from charities like the Red Cross and groups of nuns just to stay alive.

Spitou Mendy, who was himself an illegal migrant from Senegal until he gained his papers in an amnesty, now helps run Sindicato de Obreros del Campo (SOC), a small union for migrants. He thinks the numbers have swollen to more than 100,000 due to the recession.

In Mendy's eyes the conditions are slavery. "You don't find the sons of Spain in the hothouses, only the blacks and people from former colonies," he says. "The farmers only want an unqualified, malleable workforce, which costs absolutely nothing. Only one part of the business is benefiting from this. It's the big agribusiness that wins. It's the capitalists that win. And humanity is killed that way. This is slavery in Europe. At the door to Europe, there is slavery as if we were in the 16th century."

Farmers argue that the supermarkets have squeezed their margins even harder during the downturn, while costs for fuel and fertiliser have gone up. They have no choice but to cut wages, which is the one element of their production costs they can control. Farmers trying to employ people legally and at the proper rate find it hard to compete or make a profit.

Wages approaching zero, and declining profits shine a bright light on the unsustainable character of food production using capitalist methods.

Rather than weep for the supermarkets, or try to find solutions to their problems, there has to be another way. Food production is undergoing a dramatic turnaround in Venezuala. The Bolivarian revolution led by Hugo Chavez is establishing a food system free of corporate control, rejecting the free market, capitalist ideology and developing alternative systems of international trade and co-operation.

With a state controlled system, cheap agricultural credit has increased from $164 million in 1999 to $7.6 billion in 2008. In a new system of particaptory democracy, more than 35,000 community councils as well as councils of farmers and fishermen are enabling communities to monitor their food needs, shape food policies and take control of their local food systems.
These, and other examples, have to be the way forward.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Tescopoly takeover gathers pace

Whilst most families struggle to meet their bills, owners of shares in Tesco will be thrilled by today’s news. Britain’s biggest supermarket has announced pre-tax profits of £3.4 billion for the last 12 months – an astonishing rise of 10% on the previous year.

Tesco now has over 30% of the £130 billion a year British market, far ahead of its nearest competitor. Its profits are larger than its main rivals put together as Tesco’s takeover of the supermarket sector continues. Independent stores only have 2.4% of the market.

Naturally, Tesco has had more than a little help from the government and its light-touch planning regulations, as Helen Rimmer of the Tescopoly Alliance explains. “Weak planning and competition rules have allowed Tesco’s aggressive expansion to continue unchecked. Even when a new store is turned down, Tesco comes back again and again with an army of legal and planning consultants to try to force it through.”

Last year, Tesco won the backing of a tribunal when it appealed against the “competition test” set out by the Competition Commission. As a result, the chain was granted permission for a 7.390 sq metre shop to open in Yiewsley, west London, where there are already three superstores within a 10-minute drive. The decision made a mockery of the Competition Commission’s investigation into the £120 billion grocery market.

In addition to dominating the grocery trade, Tesco has built up a huge property division. This has enabled the company to cash in on the real estate market. Under its chief executive Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco has built up the biggest property portfolio of any European company with £28bn worth of assets.

Shane Brennan, public affairs director of the Association of Convenience Shops which represents more than 33,500 local shops, says that whilst his members “have a lot to learn from Tesco, the question arises how big is too big?” He says:

“While Tesco claims that it is the customers who decide, in many Tesco towns, customers have few alternatives. When a Tesco opens, there is massive pressure on other shops. The number of small shops has declined year on year in the last decade. Buying and owning land is one of the key elements in the Tesco success story. If they were to build on it, they would massively increase their size.”

Tesco’s tentacles are spreading much further than the retail and property markets. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is about to “reform” the way that property is sold in the UK. Whilst this may sound like good news for people who want to bypass estate agents by going straight to the Internet, it will allow giant companies like Tesco to muscle in on the market.

According to the consumer advice website Buy Association, “the granting of estate agency powers will create a monopoly itself; such is the marketing and loss-leading power of the Tesco brand. In many ways, the only competition that a Tesco property website would face would be from Google should it decide to also enter the property sales arena”.

Meanwhile, back in Pimlico where a new Tesco is about to open, taking the place of three local shops, the Lib Dems claim to have secured an undertaking from the company that deliveries will be at the front rather than the back of the shop! That’s alright then. All that remains is the small problem of the Tesco takeover of Britain.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win Secretary

Every little helps

Amidst the kerfuffle of Gordon Brown’s humble pie about his “mistakes” over the abolition of the 10p tax rate, and anxiety to help those who face difficulties as a result of rising prices, we should bear in mind a few home truths about the true relation between New Labour and corporate taxpayers.

Last month, Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, reported a 13% rise in full-year profits to £2.55bn. They have made the most of rising prices and their dominating position in most towns. On top of that, the reality is that while low-income earners face an increase in taxes courtesy of New Labour, Tesco has allegedly avoided paying around £100 million in tax - and there is very little that the government can or will do about it.

The details of Britain’s biggest retailer’s tax avoidance was revealed at the weekend in a special report published by The Guardian in response to a libel writ issued against the newspaper in April. Tesco was angry about star reporters Felicity Lawrence and Ian Griffiths’ discovery of a chain of offshore companies it had set up for tax avoidance purposes.

Tesco’s legal action is a serious matter for the newspaper, which currently faces charges of libel and malicious falsehood. To defend itself, The Guardian had to assemble an expensive team of corporate tax experts, specialist accountants, academics and lawyers, including two QCs, so that they could untangle the complex web of companies set up by Tesco over a period of years. It took them all of four months to work out how the company created a chain of off-shore companies so that it could raise £5 billion over five years through property sales and a leaseback programme of some of its stores.

The paper's editorial provides a graphic description of a secret trail, which would have defied the likes of Sherlock Holmes:

“To follow the cleverest tax avoidance twists and turns is beyond all but a tiny group of experts - usually the very experts who are paid to outwit the Treasury and the evident intention of parliament. [my emphasis] Understanding a really sophisticated scheme - involving offshore structures, including unit trusts, limited partnerships and companies which are liquidated almost as soon as they are established - involves an arduous trawl through the tangled world of Cayman, Jersey and Guernsey brass-plate companies, cross-checked with published company accounts and a minute reading of stock exchange announcements.”

The complexity and secrecy of these transactions is such that “even the Treasury and Revenue, with considerable resources in forensic tax analysis, find it hard to keep track of the sophisticated tax avoidance devices used by modern corporations”. The Guardian noted: “The Treasury has particularly voiced its frustration at the artificial structures used by some companies to avoid SDLT [the Stamp Duty Land Tax which Tesco sought to avoid paying].”

Whatever the outcome of Tesco’s legal threats, one thing is clear. Tax evasion is the name of the game for all the global corporations, who have monopolies in the provision of the essentials for our existence, be it food, clothing or fuel – and vast power over their suppliers. And there is actually nothing that governments or the main political parties can or will do about it because the state has hitched its star to the very same global corporations who are able to ignore the rules of taxation that apply to ordinary people.

And if journalists challenge corporations like Tesco, they find an army of lawyers outside their door delivering writs. In fact, it’s not just The Guardian that's under attack. Tesco in Thailand is suing two columnists from a Bangkok business newspaper, one for £1.6m in libel damages.

And, of course, while Tesco excels at tax evasion activities, they naturally haven’t forgotten the need to screw their labour force. For its new chain of shops in California, Tesco has placed job ads for two senior managers which listed their responsibilities. These included "maintaining union-free status" and "union avoidance activities". As the Tesco slogan has it, “every little helps”.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Protecting the powerful

Campaigners are surprised and even shocked that the Competition Commission has ignored mounting evidence about how the big four supermarkets crush competitors, force local shops to close and squeeze suppliers dry. But they shouldn’t be, because the commission’s primary function is to protect the oligopoly that exists in food retailing, with Tesco’s 30% share of the market (plus £3bn in annual profits) growing by the day.

The commission chose to ignore an unprecedented level of public interest in the investigation, with over 35,000 people writing to express their concern about supermarkets. The 269-page report, the fourth major investigation into supermarket competition since 1999, said small shops had nothing to fear from Tesco and Sainbury's convenience stores. It claimed there was “no adverse effect on competition” from the arrival of hundreds of Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local stores in neighbourhoods.

It went on to say that small shops “that provide consumers with a strong retail offer will continue to survive and prosper”. Yet statistics show that independent shops are closing at the rate of 2,000 a year and a recent report by the All-Party Parliamentary Small Shops Group estimates that by 2015 “many small shops across the UK will have ceased trading… with few independent businesses taking their place”.

Little surprise then that Tesco’s shares hit an all-time high after the market judged it to have escaped largely unscathed from the investigation. The New Labour government too will be pleased at the commission’s findings. Lord Sainsbury is a major donor to the party while Sir Terence Leahy, Tesco’s chief executive, is a government advisor.

Top of those disappointed by the commission’s report were Friends of the Earth. The two year long investigation into the grocery market was a direct result of a campaign it launched by submitting a proposal for a market study to the Office of Fair Trading, which was subsequently referred to the Competition Commission for a full inquiry. Friends of the Earth's food campaigner, Sandra Bell described yesterday’s report as “a totally inadequate response to the growing power of the big four supermarkets”, and added:

“The Competition Commission acknowledges that supermarkets bully their suppliers and reduce consumer choice, but then bizarrely recommends making it easier for them to expand. Unless urgent action is taken to curb the dominance of the big supermarkets Britain looks set to become an out of town chain store nation." Recent Friends of the Earth research highlighted how dairy farmers are struggling to break even and are unable to invest in greener farming, despite increased consumer demand for more environmentally-friendly produce. This coincided with allegations of dairy price fixing by supermarkets.

Friends of the Earth and others want yet more investigations as a way of curbing the power of the supermarkets. But these will be a complete waste of time. Supermarkets are a prime example of how corporate power has grown over the last 30 years. One of the key features of corporate-driven globalisation is the control of each sector of the economy by fewer and fewer firms. No regulator or government is capable of reversing this process, even if they wanted to, which they clearly don’t. Pressure and protest also count for little against the Tescos of this world. The solution does not lie in fruitless appeals to agencies like the Competition Commission but in campaigning for alternative, not-for-profit ways of owning and controlling food and other industries.

Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor