Bringing Ethics to the Table
Sarah Irving asks how easy is it to take our principles with us when we venture out to eat and drink, and ranks 26 of the largest national restaurant chains against ethical issues.
Selecting ethical food, drink or household products may sometimes be tough.
But when you’re standing in front of a grocery shelf there is usually scope
for comparing items and looking for organic or fair trade marks, vegetarian
or sustainable fish logos, or free range or country-of-origin labelling. And
if you’re trying to find healthy options for yourself or your children,
fresh fruit and veg or mandatory nutritional labelling is at hand.
But sitting in a restaurant, attempting to identify ethical or healthier options
whilst also trying to celebrate or relax with friends or family, can be even
harder. Many menus make vague ethical claims, like ‘local’ or ‘natural,’
without giving real information, and staff are often poorly trained to deal
with queries.
One-third of the money spent on food and drink in the UK is outside the home,
in a dining out market worth around £30 billion a year. So challenging
restaurant owners on their environmental and social sustainability and animal
welfare is well worth the effort.
What’s on my plate?
Although Ethical Consumer found that overall the levels of awareness of ethical
issues in the restaurant industry were pretty pitiful, some chains are showing
signs of beginning to grasp the idea of sustainability.
JD Wetherspoon, for example, has been serving free range eggs and organic milk
for several years, and its website promises UK-only seasonal vegetables, cod
from sustainable fisheries and children’s meals made from organic ingredients.
In 2007 it received Compassion in World Farming’s ‘Good Egg’
award for serving eggs from uncaged hens.
However, few of the chains demonstrated this kind of approach across the board.
Wetherspoons, Pitcher & Piano and Gourmet Burger Kitchen serve individual
items labelled free range, organic or local, but do not apply these principles
across their entire ranges.
One exception was Loch Fyne Restaurants, which mainly sells fish dishes but
also offers meat and vegetarian meals. The entire chain has a Marine Conservation
Society (MCS) rating of 2, which means that it: “has a sustainable fish
buying policy; does not sell fish from the MCS Fish to Avoid list; includes
at least one wild-caught species certified to the Marine Stewardship Council
or equivalent standard on its menu; any farmed species are certified to the
Soil Association or equivalent standard and/or listed on the MCS Fish to Eat
list.”
It has also just switched all its restaurants to renewable electricity.
However, Loch Fyne was recently bought up by pub chain and Hungry Horse owner
Greene King. According to sources at Loch Fyne, Greene King agreed during takeover
talks to maintain its new subsidiary’s high ethical standards; it remains
to be seen if these will filter up to the owner.
Poor reporting and transparency
The erratic awareness of sustainability issues in the restaurant trade suggests
that it would particularly benefit from good environmental and social reporting
and better transparency. The response to Ethical Consumer’s requests for
information was therefore disappointing, with TGI Friday’s refusing to
co-operate, most companies not replying at all, and only JD Weatherspon, Yum!
Brands and Loch Fyne providing comprehensive replies on questions about genetic
modification, animal welfare, local sourcing, and environmental and supply chain
policies. Many of the companies on the table had no information on sustainable
sourcing issues on their websites either.
Independent = Ethical?
The majority of restaurants are not national brands like those on the table,
but single independent venues or very small local chains.
Some of these have very pro-active stances towards ethical sourcing. Well-known
examples are the Duke of Cambridge in Islington (Britain’s “first
certified organic gastro-pub”) and Acorn House, a London restaurant which
attracted much press attention after billing itself as “dedicated to healthy
eating and environmental responsibility,” but there are many restaurants
all over the UK which have praiseworthy approaches to organic sourcing, local
suppliers, vegetarian provision and fair trade alternatives.
However, Charlotte Jarman of Ethical Eats, a project which works with some
of London’s thousands of independent restaurants to improve their sustainability,
says that there are “huge variations in awareness between restaurants owners.
The majority of restaurant owners have very little awareness of the issues.”
The Ethical Eats and Greener Curry projects of London Food Links, an NGO dedicated
to reducing the impacts of the capital’s food consumption, work with individual
restaurants and small businesses to promote energy efficiency, better sourcing
and waste management. They recognise that it is often hard for smaller businesses
to research their impacts, and so offer advice, support and the opportunity
for restaurant owners to get together and share information.
And as sustainability buzzwords like ‘organic’ and ‘local’
become more fashionable, Jarman admits that it’s also important to make
sure that restaurants stick by any claims they make, whether they’re chains
or one-off operations.
Julie’s, a fashionable West London restaurant with a substantial ‘celebrity
customers’ list on its website, was fined £7,500 for falsely selling
(and pricing) meat as organic. And the Wetherspoons and Hungry Horse chains
were both exposed in a TV documentary in August 2007 as selling steaks which
were in some cases claimed by staff to be British beef, but had actually come
from Zebu cattle raised in Africa and Brazil.(1,2) Wetherspoon’s website
uses a ‘100% British Beef” logo, but only specifies on a separate
page that this doesn’t refer to all the company’s beef meals.
“Greenwash is certainly an area of concern,” says Charlotte Jarman,
“but I’d hate to see this putting people off.”
Tips for finding an ethical restaurant
1 Visit the Vegetarian Society’s www.seedlingshowcase.org.uk,
which lists members of the Food & Drink Guild, restaurants around the UK
which have met the Society’s strict certification requirements. Not all
the restaurants certified are exclusively vegetarian, so ‘mixed’ groups
can use the site’s listings by area to find veggie-safe destinations.
2 Check out the ‘restaurants and pubs’ listings at the Marine
Conservation Society’s www.fishonline.org
to see chains and individual eateries with sustainable fish sourcing policies.
If you’re eating fish somewhere which doesn’t appear on the list or
have Marine Stewardship Council approved fish on the menu, try introducing them
to the ‘fish to avoid’ and ‘fish to eat’ lists on the MCS’s
website.
3 See the Soil Association website www.soilassociation.org
for a downloadable list of certified organic restaurants around Britain, and
guidance on how to check if organic claims are genuine.
4 There is no excuse for any restaurant serving tea, coffee or chocolate
not to offer Fairtrade options. Certification is also available for rice, herbs
& spices and fruit. Contacts details for dozens of regional and national
Fairtrade wholesalers are available from www.fairtrade.org.uk
if your favourite local eatery needs educating.
5 Some of the UK’s local groups of the ‘eco-gastronomic’
Slow Food movement have directories of recommended suppliers and restaurants.
See the groups list on www.slowfood.org.uk.
Healthy options?
In a post-Jamie Oliver world, awareness of what goes into food – especially
that intended for children – has rocketed. Many fast food chains have responded
to criticism by trying to outdo each other’s claims for reducing salt,
sugar and fat.
A degree of snobbery, perhaps, has meant that restaurant chains have escaped
much of the flak. But a November 2006 report by the Soil Association revealed
that more upscale ‘family’ restaurants like Nando’s, Garfunkel’s
and TGI Friday’s were serving children’s meals which were high in
fat, salt and sugar and which offered little in the way of fruit or vegetables.
French-themed chain Café Rouge came out worst in the survey, scoring
just 8 out of 30 possible points.(5)
And in October 2007, a review by pressure group Consensus Action on Salt &
Health reported that of several meals tested for salt levels, Pizza Hut came
out worst, with some of its meal combinations containing four times the daily
recommended limit for a six year old child. Fast food chains which have in the
past been criticised for unhealthy food came out better in the report, and were
praised for having more information available about salt content. Pizza Hut
was also condemned for failing to have any information in restaurants about
salt levels.(4)
What’s your waiter being paid?
The restaurant and catering industry is notorious for its low pay, poor conditions
and unsocial hours. While the introduction of the minimum wage may have improved
the situation for the worst-off, trade unions have also criticised employers
for keeping too many staff on this rate, treating it as a standard pay level
rather than an absolute minimum.
According to campaigners in cities like London and Manchester, the restaurant
trade is also the destination for many legal and illegal immigrants, who are
then paid even more exploitative rates of as low as £1.20 an hour. According
to campaign group London Citizens, the restaurant sector is packed with workers
who, excluded from unions by hostile employers and language barriers, are rarely
aware of rights such as sick pay or holidays.
Charlotte Jarman of Ethical Eats confirms the extent of the problem. “Very
little is being done to address the issue of staff conditions and pay,”
she says. “It’s recognised as a big problem in the industry, with
low levels of union membership. Some of the more aware restaurants on sustainability
are also aware of this issue and have good practices, but they don’t necessarily
have joined-up thinking.”
“It may also be that good working practices aren’t as marketable
as organic or local food,” Jarman suggests.
Many of the companies on the table have been criticised for workers’ rights
infringements. These include fines from the Health & Safety Executive for
JD Wetherspoon, Marston’s, Mitchells & Butlers, Whitbread and Restaurant
Group brands Chiquito and Frankie & Benny’s. Old Orleans had also been
condemned for dirty and dangerous conditions by the Chartered Institute of Environmental
Health, and in September 2007 Nando’s in Crawley was found to be employing
illegal immigrants.
Animal welfare
Of the restaurants in this report, only Loch Fyne had any kind of policy on
the welfare of animals killed for meat, and even this was not externally certified
by, for instance, the Soil Association or RSPCA. With the exception of a few
other items labelled as being free range or organic, meat eaters therefore have
to assume that what they are consuming is factory farmed.
Another level of cruelty is reached, according to animal rights campaigners,
in the production of foie gras. This expensive product is the result of geese
or ducks being force-fed through tubes to artificially fatten them and make
their livers abnormally swollen. Foie gras has been banned by the city of Chicago
in the USA and is being phased out by the state of California. In 2007, a councillor
in York tried to follow suit. The council ruled that an all-out ban was beyond
its remit but forbade the sale of foie gras on council property, and passed
on its position to the city’s powerful tourist industry. A UK government
minister also called for a consumer boycott.(3)
Of the restaurant brands on the table, only the Living Room sold foie gras
as of November 2007. Companies with shareholder relationships to TGI Friday’s,
Carluccio’s and Piccolino also served it.
Vegetarian and vegan provision
Vegetarianism is a fairly mainstream dietary choice nowadays, and with the
help of a few celebrities even veganism is a well-known ethical or health stance.
So it is surprising and depressing how poorly vegetarians and especially vegans
are served in chain restaurants. After all, even the traditional demon of food
campaigners, McDonald’s, has Vegetarian Society approved options.
All the restaurants on the table offered vegetarian options, although those
at Hard Rock Cafe and Loch Fyne were particularly narrow, and many were unimaginative
and nutritionally limited. None were certified by the Vegetarian Society, although
JD Weatherspoon was shortlisted in the 2005 Vegetarian Society Awards, and none
gave information about vegan options, forcing vegan customers to depend on often
limited staff knowledge about what is acceptable to specific diets. Wagamama
and JD Weatherspoon did tackle this on their websites. None of the other restaurants
offered soya or other dairy-free alternatives.
It doesn’t have to be this bad!
Charlotte Jarman of Ethical Eats insists that the restaurant industry can be
more sustainable, and some restaurants and pub-eateries are exploring good practice
in different aspects of their work. At the Bread & Roses pub in Clapham,
London, for example, staff in this notoriously low-paid and insecure sector
are given proper contracts negotiated with the T&G union. These include
sick and holiday pay and an hourly rate significantly above that of most pub
staff.
Meanwhile at Isinglass in Urmston, Manchester, Julie Bagnoli says that “When
we opened four years ago many chefs openly laughed at the idea of serving fair
trade, local, often organic food as a quick road to bankruptcy. The ‘clever’
way was describe it as Tatton Park venison, organic beef etc and substitute
the cheapest possible (usually imported) alternative to make maximum profit.”
But, says Julie, they persevered. “We knew enough people who ate ethically
at home and would want to dine somewhere that delivered what it said, and that
they would pay the small necessary premium. By collecting vegetables, lamb etc
direct from the farmer we could save money while paying more than the wholesalers’
price, a win-win situation which avoided the usual rank exploitation of primary
producers.”
Isinglass and Bread & Roses are both small, independent outlets with the
flexibility to experiment on how to implement their ethics. But with the resources
available to large companies to research the issues, Charlotte Jarman sees no
reason why such ethics shouldn’t extend throughout the sector. “The
chains really should be able to pay for themselves in getting advice,”
she says.
Links and further reading
- Wider information on outlets selling vegetarian and organic food (although
not necessarily fully certified) can be found in the Vegetarian Britain and
Vegetarian Europe guides, available through the Vegetarian
Society and the Organic Directory (annual, published by Green Books),
also available online at www.soilassociation.org
- London
Food Link has information on both the Ethical Eats and Greener Curry programmes,
and downloads of the One Planet Dining and Recipe for a Greener Curry reports.
- London Citizens’
living wage campaign
References
1 The Times online 15/09/2007
2 www.meatinfo.co.uk 21/08/2007
3 The Times online 04/08/2007
4 Action on Salt & Health press
release 19/10/2007
5 Soil Association press release 30/11/2006
6
http://icsurreyonline.icnetwork.co.uk 26/09/2007
7 Environmental News
Service 27/7/2007 “50 Dirtiest US Power Plants Named.”
8 www.blackstone.com
18/5/2007
9 Rainforest Relief Hard Rock Cafe campaign sheet, viewed 4/10/2007
10 www.hse.gov.uk, viewed by ECRA 7/11/2007
11 www.wealden.gov.uk
press release dated 4/4/2007
12 www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com 13/11/2007