2007 archive

Autumn 2007

London Food Link launched its new-look website on 10 October. The largest new addition is the Local Food Finder – an online directory to help businesses in London locate food produced in and around the capital. The site is at http://www.localfoodfinder.org/

Events and visits

Over 80 people from social enterprises, community groups, food businesses and local government gathered at the Duke of Cambridge Organic Pub in July to hear about work in the capital to increase the availability of local, organic and Fairtrade food. Eleven speakers spoke about, amongst other things, London's bid to become the largest Fairtrade city.

On 11 July, LFL ran a visit to Lambourne End and Forest Farm Peace Garden. As well as seeing how the farms operate, we discussed the logistics and feasibility of how caterers in London might use this local produce.

London Food Link worked in partnership with the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens on this year's City Harvest Festival on 22 September. The theme of this year's event was Growing Food in the City.

Greener Food

Charlotte continues to visit restaurants and catering businesses to conduct audits as part of the Greener Food project, which provides free environmental business support to London's restaurant sector. Twelve Greener Food businesses have now received tailor-made action plans.

Greener Food attended the Speciality & Fine Food Fair (September) and the Restaurant Show (October), both of which helped raise awareness and recruit new businesses to the project. At the Restaurant Show we launched the Greener Food Menu – a CD-ROM featuring case studies and tips on going green.

Ethical Eats

Together with our Greener Food partners London Remade, we organised Talking Rubbish, an event designed to help restaurants and catering businesses identify practical and sustainable solutions to their waste problems. The meeting was hosted by the East London Community Recycling Partnership and involved a tour of their food composting facility, as well as presentations from two companies offering waste services to London businesses.

Sustainable fish

We worked with the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to organise a trip to the MSC-certified mackerel, herring and Dover sole fisheries in Hastings on 3 September. Public sector catering staff working with the Good Food on the Public Plate project also attended, as the MSC is keen to introduce more sustainable fish into hospital catering.

In conjunction with the MSC's Fish & Kitchen project (funded by the Environmental Action Fund), we are helping a small group of London restaurants to become certified to use the MSC logo on their menus.

Multicultural communities

One of LFL's clients, Anila's Authentic Sauces, won a coveted 3 Gold Stars award at the 2007 Great Taste Awards.

In Norfolk, a dairy producer of un-pasteurised milk from Jersey cows has asked for LFL's help to market its milk to producers of Indian sweets. We are also helping to find London public and private sector buyers for sustainably raised beef cattle, slaughtered to religious principles.

Zeenat is setting up meetings between EAFL and restaurant groups specialising in ethnic cuisine. The aim is to develop the opportunity for east of England farmers to supply ethnic food businesses with UK-grown crops, or develop commercial cultivation of exotic crops.

Zeenat was invited to speak about ethnic participation in street markets at the Whitecross Street Market as part of the Barbican's New Crowned Hope festival. She was also guest speaker at the launch of a new LDA funded project, Fair & Organic. This three-year project will support new communities from Africa and Latin America to get involved in the UK food industry by addressing the traditional food needs of specific groups and promoting sustainable food products.

US Urban Agriculture visit

In the summer, Ben Reynolds spoke at the Kentish Town City Farm event. The focus of this event was a talk by Will Allen, from Growing Power, a city farm in America. We developed a relationship with Will Allen and the US Embassy, helping show them round other London projects. This led to the US Embassy funding a trip for four London urban agriculture experts in October, co-ordinated by LFL. We are keen to learn how the Americans have used space in public parks for food growing.

New projects

Two new strands of work for the London Development Agency will contribute to implementation of the London Food Strategy. One will involve running workshops for businesses around using sustainable food. For the other, LFL will be administering a grants programme supporting local food events and celebrations around London.

Summer 2007

Restaurants

Charlotte Jarman visited ten catering outlets including restaurants, cafés and a factory canteen to conduct audits of their food supply chains as part of the Greener Food project. Work has begun on the action plans, which will provide each business with tailor-made recommendations as to how it can incorporate more sustainable ingredients into its menu.

Charlotte has also started to draw up some more generic guidance on sustainable food to be provided to the Greener Food businesses that are not undergoing a detailed food audit.

The second Ethical Eats meeting (of the network of ethical restaurants and cafés) took place on 5 June. The meeting was organised in partnership with London Sustainability Exchange (LSx) and Slow Food London, and was both a “meet-the-producer event” and the official launch of the Greener Food project.
One Planet Dining, our report on London's restaurant sector was released at the start of May. The report has had coverage in both printed and online media including the Morning Advertiser (the most popular site for trade news), The Caterer, Chefs on the Web and New Consumer magazine. The report is available to buy or download from www.sustainweb.org/publications.

Our next report may be on the state of catering training in London, and the research is being undertaken by volunteer Vanessa Domenzain. She is focusing on the extent to which sustainability is included in these courses.

Multicultural communities

One of Zeenat's clients, Anila's Authentic Sauces, is now stocked by the first Whole Foods Market in the UK. As a result of recent supplier visits, Zeenat is working to set up meetings between restaurant groups specialising in ethnic cuisine and East Anglia Food Link (EAFL). The aim is to develop the opportunity for east of England farmers to supply ethnic food businesses with more of the crops already grown in the UK or develop the commercial cultivation of crops not traditionally grown here. We are also working with EAFL to inform the design of the LDA's sustainable food hub project by consulting London wholesalers about the opportunities and barriers for getting more sustainable produce, accredited with crop assurance schemes, into the London markets.

London 2012 food

The Olympics research which we have been working on in conjunction with the New Economics Foundation and Soil Association is nearing completion, and is due for release this autumn. We and other sustainable food experts will be meeting with Olympics sponsors and potential caterers for the 2012 Games.

Networking and promotion

Park Royal Partnership (PRP) is an organisation supporting businesses on the Park Royal Business Park. PRP has recommended that their new website, focusing on the needs of the biggest food manufacturing site in Europe, contains a direct link to London Food Link's website. LFL is also working with Greater London Enterprise on a module in its year-long “Making It” programme to provide food manufacturers with information to run a more sustainable business.

After Ben Reynolds visited Korea to present on the London Food Strategy at the end of 2006, we were pleased to host a return visit of a group of Korean press and political party researchers. Their visit, to see how the local food system operates in London, included meetings with government officials, farmers' market operators and visits to farms, wholesale markets and community food projects. In recent months we have also had visits from officials from Gothenburg, Glasgow, Vancouver and Amsterdam, who have also been interested in the London Food Strategy. As a result we have started an informal international network of those working on urban food policy (with the temporary moniker of GUFPEN: Global Urban Food Policy E-Network). If you are interested in joining this ad-hoc email group, or if you know of anyone working on food policy in other cities around the world, (or can think of a better name!) please contact ben@sustainweb.org.

Spring 2007

Charlotte Jarman joined London Food Link in February 2007 to work on Greener Food, a project which aims to support London restaurants, cafés and take-aways in becoming more sustainable.

The project offers participating businesses an environmental audit of their operation, covering areas such as energy and water use, waste and recycling, and food supply chains. Each business then receives a tailor made action plan setting out recommendations for improving practice in these areas. LFL is working on the food element of the project, helping the businesses to identify and purchase more sustainable ingredients.

The project is being funded by the London Development Agency and co-ordinated by London Sustainability Exchange, and will run until March 2009.

Ethical Eats

London Food Link brought together London's leading ethical eateries for the first time to discuss how to make the sector more sustainable. Representatives of restaurants including Leon, Moshi Moshi, and Sausage & Mash Café met with Sustain, the Marine Stewardship Council and other environmental organisations to discuss how to tackle the slippery issue of sustainable fish. This Ethical Eats network will meet several times each year. The next meeting of the network will be a “meet the producer” event on 5 June, during London Sustainability Weeks, at which restaurant owners and chefs will be given the opportunity to see and taste seasonal produce from local suppliers. Restaurants and other catering businesses interested in joining the Ethical Eats network should contact Emily Crawley on 020 7837 1228 or emily@sustainweb.org.

Reports

Media aimed at ethnic minorities was targeted for the launch of London Food Link's new report, Recipe for a Greener Curry released in March 2007. The report's twin messages were that ethnic food businesses are missing out on the burgeoning market for ethical food and that commercial, sustainable growers should be making links with ethnic communities to meet their food needs. The report's author, Zeenat Anjari, was interviewed on four ethnic audience radio stations over the Easter weekend. Articles will appear in forthcoming issues of specialist magazines for ethnic food consumers and businesses, (Zaikha, Tandoori and Spice Business) and those for fruit and vegetable growers (Fresh Produce Journal and Commercial Grower).

One Planet Dining, our research into London's restaurant sector currently being printed and should be available soon.

London 2012 food

We will be starting work on some preliminary research into the opportunities for sustainable food at the 2012 games. This research, done in conjunction with the New Economics Foundation and the Soil Association, will be starting in May 2007. For more information, please contact ben@sustainweb.org . In conjunction with this research, we are helping LOCOG (the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) to develop a sustainable food strategy over this year for the “games-time” part of the Olympics, ie not the construction or legacy.

Partnerships

We hope to help find suppliers of sustainable food for a number of events this summer. In particular, we have approached the organisers of the peoples' village in Hyde Park, which is the official fayre for the London leg of the Tour De France this July. For more information on the event and LFL membership, contact ben@sustainweb.org.

We will also be the main partners for this year’s City Harvest festival at Capel Manor college, Enfield, September.Get in touch with Ben to find out more.

Multicultural communities

Zeenat has attended and spoken at meetings arranged by business support agencies including Think Food an event staged by Creative Food Solutions looking at marketing ethnic food; and the first meeting of network of business support agencies providing co-ordinated advice to London's food manufacturers, run by the Manufacturing Advisory Service (MAS) and funded by the London Development Agency.

Her work on regionalising the food supply chain in West London, thus getting local food into many of the small, independent ethnic food businesses, has led to Hounslow Council developing a sustainable market officer post at Western International Market (WIM).

Winter 2006/7

LFL is working with Good Food on the Public Plate to organise visits for Londoners see where their food comes from, and how it got there.

The London Food Access Forum, run with Sustain’s Food Access Network, is one year old and has covered issues such as food mapping, links with the private sector, and evaluation techniques. The next meeting is on 7 March and will focus on older people.

The next issue of London Food Link’s network newsletter Jellied Eel will be distributed in February, and proposals are being developed to generate funding to allow us to print a much larger number of copies, so that news about the LFL network can spread more widely.

Multicultural communities

The forthcoming report, Recipe for a Greener Curry: How culturally distinctive food in London can also celebrate sustainable food, was promoted at the World Food exhibition in November and Zeenat ran a workshop on opportunities for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) businesses to use sustainable food. Zeenat will now be building on this success to work with more BAME businesses to increase the amount of sustainable food they stock.

Restaurants

The report One Planet Dining: London's growing market for eating out sustainably, is due to be published in February. See the front page for more details.

LFL's work with restaurants and hotels continues with the hotel chain Mal Maison. Our work with the London branch has led to the introduction of more sustainable ingredients across the chain, from meat to preserves. Project officer Ben Reynolds has also been one of the judges for the Considerate Hoteliers Award for sustainable food, jointly sponsored by Sustain and Oxford Brookes University.

Towards a greener London

Charlotte Jarman is joining London Food Link in February to work on the new, two-year project Towards a Greener Food and Drink Sector in London, run by London Sustainability Exchange. Charlotte will be part of a team drawn from other organisations who will run environmental audits on food and drink businesses covering waste, energy, water and food supply.

Fundraising

In March, we should hear whether we are successful in a fund-raising bid to the London Develeopment Agency’s Opportunities Fund for a sustainable catering consortium. LFL also applied to be part of the Plunkett Foundation's Big Lottery bid, to undertake work on food co-ops and food hubs.

The Soil Association has approached Sustain to participate in a joint project to carry out an assessment of the likely environmental, social and economic effects of food provision for the 2012 Olympics and in the post-games period. The project is funded by Triodos Bank, and a joint Triodos / Soil Association event was held in January, called Can the Olympics get conscious about consumption? The report will look at what would happen if Olympics organisers fail to take account of food sustainability. It will also set out the case for benefits that could be achieved if food played its part in making this the greenest Olympics yet.