Blog Spot
Maxine Perella
I'm taking a punt on horsemeat as our sustainability saviour
We may have unwittingly backed a winner in horsemeat, you know. I'm thinking sustainable consumption here. In this
era of radical transparency, such a scandal is raising serious questions among the
public at large over not only what they
eat, but where the food on their plate
originates from.
It doesn't take much for consumer
confidence to plummet and we Brits are
quick to vote with our feet. Many burger
hunters may now shun the supermarket
shelves and head towards their nearest
independent butcher or farmer's market
instead. This is a textbook lesson for the
big corporates in how to screw up on
supply chain traceability.
So how did it get to this? Well, demand
for cheap food certainly hasn't helped
– but there's a deeper dynamic at play
here I think. A leading commentator in
this field, Forum for the Future deputy
chief executive Sally Uren, hit the nail
on the head when she recently said that
consumers have, by and large, become
totally disconnected from their purchasing decisions. Not many shoppers give
much thought to how their products or
services are sourced. Few care either –
except when they swallow something
