Blood Sweat and Takeaways

If you are planning a night in tonight and wondering if anything good is on the box you might want to tune into Blood Sweat and Takeaways on BBC3 at 9pm.

Following on from the BAFTA nominated series, Blood Sweat and T-shirts which showed the human cost of our cheap clothing, the team turn their attention to some of the fast food industry’s main ingredients over the next 4 weeks. 6 young volunteers have travelled to SE Asia to live and work (or should that be slave?) alongside the food workers to see who bears the real cost behind the production of tuna, prawns, rice and chicken enabling us to eat so ridiculously cheaply.

We are delighted every time the true costs of overly cheap food are brought into the spotlight. Steve and I set up Scoff because we are passionate about making it easier to eat better quality food and to rally support for sustainable farming practices on our own shores that have almost become extinct in the quest for cheaper and cheaper food. More often than not this cheap food is also nutritionally light so we are now seeing a situation in the Western world where on average we are over fed but undernourished. It’s just wrong. Things have to change for the good of our own health, the environment and to put a stop to the exploitation of people in developing countries.

For the record, here at Scoff we deliberately don’t use tuna or prawns (we did have some great garlic creel-caught Scottish langoustine on the menu when we first opened but unfortunately they didn’t prove popular enough due to price and because people would have preferred them served already shelled which, of course, would have bumped the price even higher with the labour cost). All our chicken is free range, enjoying life wondering around Peter and Sue’s Devon fields and our all our rice is organic and sourced from Essential Trading, a wholesale co-operative which strives to be a truly ethical company supporting the principles of fair trade.

I would also like to emphasise that we do not in anyway feel that ethical sourcing ever comes before good cooking and top notch service. If we ever inadvertently slip up on these two vital aspects of our whole raison d’être, please, please do tell us so we can put things right. Occasionally things don’t go according to our best laid plans because of genuine human error, but never because we are sitting back on our ethical laurels and taking it easy.   

If you do get a chance to watch it I would be very interested to hear your thoughts (if you wanted to feel really smug you could try watching it whilst tucking into some Scoff!). You could post a comment on our blog at www.scoff.co.uk and start a bit of a discussion.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and whether the series makes you think twice before buying a tuna sandwich or ordering a curry or Chinese takeaway from that cheap place down the road!  

Sarah May 2009

End Farming Ignorance

Just feel like ranting! The recession is here, and here to stay for quite a while by all accounts. Seems like people want to fully enjoy the recession by not feeding their brains properly. The great excuse of not having enough money to buy good food can now be couched in 'the recession' so it is no longer embarrassing for people to have to make excuses why they are not shopping at the farmer's market.

The net result...... we are all going backwards. Why people don't fully understand that what they put into their bodies not only has an impact on themselves and their own well being, but also the environment that we live in is beyond me.

We run a small husband and wife business. We are passionate about supporting good farmers and just have to find a way to ensure that we survive, so by default we help them survive. If we don't, lots of people will say 'just another victim of the recession'. In truth it will say more about people's eating habits than it will about the recession. I would rather a proud nation that stopped buying designer jeans (or quite so many pairs) than the quality of food that we put into ourselves.

FACT: the price of a takeaway has not increased in the last 10 years. Go on - dig out your old take away menus from the late 90's. Bet you the Tikka masala is the same price as it is today. In the meantime we have had extraordinary energy rises, raw material price increases, labour cost increases, council and business rate tax increases. So - how are most of them doing it? Using as cheap a meat as they possibly can. And guess what - the majority of people don't care about it. At last year's real food festival (www.realfoodfestival.co.uk) there was a debate when Trudie Styler (the Organic flag waving wife of Sting) admitted that she was anal at home in following organic principles but did not really bother too much when she was out (I think because it causes too much fuss). And therein lies the rub. Let's not cause a fuss - how British.

Well - time to cause a fuss. I think our sanity depends on it.

Below are two articles well worth reading. Both relate to the Pig Industry that has had lots of coverage this year. 

Extraxt

Pigs kept on slatted, concrete floors; pregnant sows in cages so small they can't move; piglets castrated without pain relief; tails routinely docked to prevent animals attacking each other. This is the truth behind the European pig industry - and so behind most of the pork we eat

Article on Pig Farming

Article for the G20 Summitt