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Tackling Food Waste : The Real Junk Food Project

UK mainstream media dubbed it a “food waste supermarket” when it opened in September, but The Real Junk Food Project’s first warehouse in  Pudsey, Yorkshire, is unlike anything that most people would describe as a supermarket. To be sure, it has shelves loaded with supermarket food products, alongside fresh produce from allotments and surplus products discarded by a food photography studio, but there is not a shelf-edge price label in sight. Instead, users are invited to “pay what they feel” – either in cash or in kind. Local supermarkets have agreed to donate stock which they can no longer sell legally, but is still fit for human consumption. In so doing, they save the cost of disposal and The Real Junk Food Project can “feed bellies, not landfill.” The depot is the latest in a series of projects and pop-up cafés that tackle food waste head-on. The Real Junk Food Project network has members across the UK, France and Germany: contact details can be found on its website at www.therealjunkfoodproject.org By loading the video, you […]

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19 Food Films to Inform and Inspire

If you’re craving good films on the food system, Food Tank has put together a list of documentaries and films to inspire, educate, and give viewers some food for thought. Each film explores a different topic in food and agriculture, some with a dash of social equality or a splash of health awareness. Whether you’re a social activist, small farmer, or sustainability advocate, or you just enjoy food, we’re sure you’ll find a food film to further inform and interest you in all things food. This article originally appeared at Food Tank. Here are 19 films to satisfy your food films palette: American Meat: “American Meat” walks viewers through the evolution of animal agriculture and highlights alternative animal husbandry systems that protect the environment and animal welfare. The film features farmer and advocate Joel Salatin, who uses sustainable land management methods, such as rotational grazing, and emphasizes the importance of supporting one’s local foodshed. The film also highlights stories from other farmers nationwide who are raising cows, pigs, and chickens in environmentally sustainable and humane ways. Dive! […]

Latest from key partners

New TTIP Report Reveals Corporate Takeover of Meat

By Shefali Sharma, European Director IATP, 12.07.2016 The Institute for Trade Policy’s European Office, along with international group Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), German member of Via Campesina—Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft e.V. (AbL) and PowerShift launched their new report Selling Off the Farm: Corporate Meat’s Takeover through TTIP with a panel discussion and a press briefing at the European Parliament on the 12th July. Some key findings from the report: Many new agricultural and food technologies are being developed or already utilized with limited or no regulation. TTIP will make rulemaking in the public interest much more difficult in the future for technologies such as gene editing and cloning. Labour and environmental regulations related to the meat industry are inadequate on both sides of the Atlantic and need to be strengthened. Trade unions and environmental campaigns have achieved incremental gains; however, TTIP is likely to make it difficult to improve regulations. The chilling effect of TTIP’s (de)regulatory cooperation provisions will make it increasingly challenging in the future to effectively regulate impacts of the meat industry on climate change […]

Latest from EU Member States

How Brexit Threatens Britain’s Food Security

by Tim Lang, City University London The situation created by the British vote to leave the European Union is momentous for UK food. It is on a par with the Repeal of the Corn Laws of 1846 when Britain decided its Empire could feed it, not its own farmers. And it is as important as the creation of the Agriculture Act of 1947 when after two bruising wars in which the population faced serious risk of starvation, the country decided to put its food house in order – to produce more of what it could and look after the land. Those events set the tone and framework for UK food for decades after. Brexit will do the same. It doesn’t help that the political elites are now knifing each other in a distraction from the genuine, looming effects. My concern is that the security of food might get lost in the debacle. The UK must not let that happen. Food stocks are low in a just-in-time economy, an estimated three to five days’ worth. The […]

Latest from Brussels

Commission to Railroad CETA

In what has been an absolutely tumultuous week for the EU and its institutions, Jean Claude Junker has announced that the European Commission intends to approve the EU-Canada trade deal CETA without national parliament approval. […]

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Article 50 time bomb explained

Once paragraph four is taken into account, there is no role for the UK government to play in discussing the terms of the settlement that will be negotiated by the 27 remaining members of the European Union. Within a two-year window the UK will have to accept whatever is handed down by the remaining member states. […]