Food Ethics Council

Understanding how power is shifting within the food system and improving public accountability.

The routes by which food reaches many of us today are not only round-about but also, at least in places, meticulously organised. On its way from farm to fork food changes hands many times and often crosses continents. Extending off the supply chain is a vast network of people and institutions that affect what we eat, including regulators, agricultural companies and campaign groups. But as the food system has become more and more complex, the ways it is managed have become increasingly intricate. In the UK, as in other wealthy countries, much of our food is monitored, quality controlled and accredited before it gets to us.

These new processes of managing food and agriculture, along with other trends, are re-shaping power relationships within the food system. It is not only the capacity to govern how food is produced, consumed and distributed day-to-day that has been changing, but also who is able to influence the 'rules of the game'. The past few decades have seen the power of the largest food retailers grow, and that of the farm lobby and government agriculture departments diminish. Within the public sector, meanwhile, regulation at the national level has been giving way to international standards intended to make free trade easier. There has been resistance to these trends towards corporate concentration and liberalisation from some sectors of civil society, and mass social movements have emerged promoting community control over food and farming.

Our work in this area focuses on understanding trends in power within the food system and improving the public accountability of powerful institutions.