Tesco’s 1,000 Mile Chickens

Last week, news appeared that Tesco are trucking chickens from Scotland to Essex to be slaughtered and packed before trucking them all the way back to Scotland to go on sale – a round trip of 1,000 miles.

Needless to say, environmentalists pounced on this as yet another example of how Tesco are contributing to the climate change crisis.

But wait a minute, why would Tesco do this? Trucking the birds 1,000 miles adds transport costs and lead time to their supply chain. Are the supply chain managers at Tesco really that stupid?

Of course not: it turns out that they were using a processing plant in Scotland but it closed last year so they were forced to send the birds elsewhere. Apparently, a new plant is due to be licensed in Scotland soon so the birds will get less travel sick (not that they will care!)

Maybe the people at Tesco are not so crazy after all.

How much carbon do you eat?

I’ve just come across an interesting website that allows you to calculate the carbon footprint of the food that we eat. 

It’s at www.foodcarbon.co.uk and includes a calculator that works by asking a load of questions about your average consumption of foods like meat, dairy products, fruit & veg. and bread. The questionnaire takes about 10 minutes to fill in, depending on how often you have to go to the kitchen to check where the food comes from. Not surprisingly, the place of origin has a big impact on the ‘carbon footprint’ of the food, as does whether it’s chilled or frozen and organic or non-organic. According to the calculator, the carbon footprint of the food that my family eats is 3862 kg per year and 30% of this is from milk! That seems to be because cows are very high carbon animals and because of the energy used to keep the milk cool. Reducing the carbon footprint of the food we eat seems to be about eating fresh local food and cutting down on high carbon food like beef.  Cutting the amount of food that we waste will also help: see my blog ‘50% of UK food is Wasted’ to read about this problem!