The Co-op's survey suggests consumers consider Fairtrade products as more 'ethical' despite being imported by air
First, we worry about the welfare of other people, then animals, then the wider environment.
There's not much in it, but if you were looking to rank the ethical concerns of the Co-op's customers, this would be a quick snapshot. I can't say that I'm too surprised by the findings of the supermarket's latest survey of "customer ethics", as reported in the Guardian, because it pretty much sums up what most other similar research shows - namely, that we tend to connect more with issues that directly effect the lives of other living beings - be they human or animal - than amorphous concepts such as climate change (even though this will, of course, directly effect the lives of all living beings in the longer term).
I was once doing a talk at a school when I began the debate by holding up three apples. They all looked the same from a distance, but I explained to the sixth-form pupils that each one was subtly different. One was an organic apple from New Zealand, one was a Fairtrade apple from South Africa and one was a non-organic apple from Kent. I then asked the pupils which one they would prefer to buy in a shop if they were all priced the same. Over half said they would buy the Fairtrade apple because, as one pupil put it, "they helped poor farmers in Africa". Only a handful said they were bothered about the environmental impact of food miles, but many agreed that they would prefer not to eat an apple sprayed with pesticides. Such sentiments are largely reflected in the Co-op's survey, too.
It makes sense, given the Co-op's findings, that it has banned, with immediate effect, the sale of eggs from caged hens. It has also promised that from this month all its own-brand hot beverages will be certified as Fairtrade. But echoing the recent debate held by the Soil Association, it says it doesn't favour, in contrast to some of its rivals, labelling food products with airplane stickers to denote that they have been air-freighted in from abroad, because this would have a detrimental effect on growers in developing countries.
So how do you prioritise you own ethical concerns when out shopping? Do you favour reducing your food miles over, say, supporting organic production methods? Do you worry more about fast-eroding stocks of North Sea fish, or the fast-eroding livelihoods of the North Sea fishermen? Or should the supermarkets take most of these difficult decisions out of our hands and make them on our behalf behind the scenes - a process known as "choice editing" - as is being proposed by the person who first coined the term "food miles", Professor Tim Lang?
