Boost in demand in June on back of jubilee celebrations fails to prevent third successive fall
Britain’s retailers are suffering the sharpest drop in spending since the depths of the coronavirus pandemic as hard-pressed consumers tighten their belts as a result of soaring inflation.
The monthly health check from the British Retail Consortium (BRC) reported a third successive drop in activity as the cost of living crisis continued to bite.
Continue reading...Soaring cost of produce in Australia has ‘exacerbated health inequality’ and leads researchers to call for farmers to be subsidised
The price of food has continued to rise, with new data showing that every supermarket aisle has been hit by hikes, not just fruit and vegetables.
The soaring prices have led researchers to call on the federal government to help subsidise growers, amid concerns it’s costing some lower socioeconomic families 40% of their income to buy a week’s worth of healthy food.
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Continue reading...Nine Colorado employees claim their dismissals came after an organizing campaign in response to safety concerns and pay problems
Nine Starbucks workers at three stores in Denver, Colorado, who were fired shortly after their stores voted to unionize allege they were dismissed in retaliation for union organizing at the American coffee chain giant.
The firings are among a few dozen cases around the US where workers have alleged they have been fired from the coffee retail chain during a union organizing campaign at their store. More than 180 Starbucks corporate retail stores in the US have voted to unionize, and more than 300 have filed for union elections.
Continue reading...Drop in chickpea crop could have serious impact on countries such as India, Bangladesh and Pakistan
Growers are warning of a global chickpea shortage, endangering supplies of hummus just as barbecue season gets into gear, in a development which could have serious consequences for countries that rely on the pulses as an essential source of protein.
Supplies of chickpeas could drop as much as 20% this year, according to the Global Pulse Confederation, as difficult weather conditions and the war in Ukraine hit production.
Continue reading...Workers at big chains struggle to make ends meet as prices increase but their wages have not
Minerva Rodriguez has worked at McDonald’s in Houston, Texas, for more than 23 years. She is paid $12 an hour and says she is doing the work of two to three people because the restaurant is chronically understaffed. Now she, like many Americans, is facing another crisis: runaway inflation. And while she has noticed the food prices at her store have increased, pay has not.
“The wages are incredibly low and not sufficient for the work we do,” said Rodriguez, who joined the Fight for $15 and a union movement to push for higher wages and better working conditions. “They don’t want to lose that extra money. If they can have their present workers do double the job and not have to pay another worker it’s a benefit for them, but what happens with us? With food costs rising and gas prices rising, how are we supposed to live?”
Continue reading...Collaboration between national water agency and craft brewer described as ‘highly quaffable’
It is a beer made with only the finest ingredients: premium German barley malts, aromatic Citra and Calypso hops, farmhouse yeast from Norway – and reclaimed sewage.
NewBrew, a collaboration between Singapore’s national water agency and the local craft brewery Brewerkz, has already proved popular and has sold out on tap at the brewery’s restaurants, according to reports.
Continue reading...Contamination found at plant in Belgium run by Swiss group Barry Callebaut
Production has been halted in the world’s biggest chocolate plant, run by the Swiss group Barry Callebaut in Wieze, Belgium, after salmonella contaminations were found.
A company spokesman said production had been protectively halted at the factory, which produces liquid chocolate in wholesale batches for 73 clients making confectionaries.
Continue reading...Ukraine war, China lockdowns and Brexit help push up inflation, with products that rely on wheat worst hit
Food price rises in the UK could hit 15% this summer – the highest level in more than 20 years – with inflation lasting into the middle of next year, according to a report.
Meat, cereals, dairy, fruit and vegetables are likely to be the worst affected as the war in Ukraine combines with production lockdowns in China and export bans on key food stuffs such as palm oil from Indonesia and wheat from India, the grocery trade body IGD warns.
Continue reading...Joe Biden working with European governments to avert global crisis and help lower food prices
Temporary silos will be built along the Ukraine border, including in Poland, in an attempt to help export more grain from the country and avert a global food crisis, Joe Biden has announced.
The US president told a Philadelphia union convention on Tuesday that he was working with European governments on the plan “to help bring down food prices”.
Continue reading...Strategy described as ‘missed opportunity’ as final wording merely commits to ‘considering’ animal welfare
Animal welfare campaigners, food policy experts and farmers have reacted with fury after the government watered down post-Brexit trade deal standards in its food strategy, released on Monday.
In a version of the strategy leaked to the Guardian on Friday, the government committed to making it easier for countries to import goods if they have high animal welfare standards.
Continue reading...Henry Dimbleby says government’s response to his review of food system shows no vision and ‘is not a strategy’
The government’s lead adviser on food issues has condemned what ministers have billed as a landmark national plan to combat food poverty and obesity, saying it is “not a strategy” and warning it could mean more children will go hungry.
Henry Dimbleby’s verdict is further bad news for Boris Johnson as the white paper is a direct response to last year’s wide-ranging review of Britain’s food system, which was led by the restaurateur.
Continue reading...Kamal Gandhi, 70, and his Coventry chip shop became a sensation after its name was turned into a catchy song
It has been two weeks since his Coventry chip shop became a TikTok sensation drawing in crowds from around the country, and 70-year-old Kamal Gandhi is exhausted.
He has had to take on and train four new staff members, ensure a continuous supply of stock to deal with hundreds of new customers and help manage the long queues snaking down the road outside the now world famous Binley Mega Chippy.
Continue reading...Reports handed to EU claim vessels likely to have entered coastal states’ waters where stocks are dwindling
European fishing fleets have been illegally netting tuna from dwindling stocks in the Indian Ocean, according to data presented to EU authorities and analysed by expert groups.
EU purse seine (a type of large net) fishing vessels were present in the waters of Indian Ocean coastal states, where they were likely to have carried out unauthorised catches, and have reported catches in the Chagos archipelago marine protected area and in Mozambique’s exclusive economic zone.
Continue reading...Poor seed harvests have led to empty shelves at supermarkets in France and global shortages
Climate change and rising costs are causing supermarkets in France to run out of dijon mustard, raising questions over whether the shortage could spread to other countries.
French mustard producers said seed production in 2021 was down 50% after poor harvests, which they said had been brought on by the changing climate in France’s Burgundy region and Canada – the second largest mustard seed producer in the world.
Continue reading...Group warns of ‘cascade of export bans’ amid failure to ease grain bottlenecks fuelling shortages and inflation, MHP said
One of Ukraine’s largest farming groups has called for an urgent solution to unblock the country’s Black Sea ports as exports of grain, sunflower and rapeseed are being held up by the Russian naval blockade, driving inflation and shortages around the world.
G7 ministers have held urgent talks about trying to open routes through Romanian and Baltic ports, potentially fed with an army of 10,000 trucks making a five-day trip from Ukraine.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Maroš Šefčovič responds to Truss, saying EU keen to reach a settlement but stresses UK actions raise ‘significant concerns’
In the Commons the government chief whip, Chris Heaton-Harris, has just moved the writ for two forthcoming byelections - in Wakefield, and in Tiverton and Honiton.
Both byelections are expected to be held on Thursday 23 June - the sixth anniversary of the Brexit referendum.
Under pressure from some Conservative MPs, some of whom have been threatening to write letters of no confidence in Boris Johnson unless they get their way, ministers have retreated from banning “Buy One Get One Free” deals and from imposing a watershed of 9pm on junk food advertising. While some measures, such as rules on the positioning of unhealthy foods by retailers, will still go ahead in October, this U-turn adds to the long history of failed obesity strategies.
Humans evolved, when food was scarce, to indulge in calorie-dense foods if the opportunity arose. Now, the abundance of food and its particularly highly processed nature, which means we go on eating for a long time before feeling full, leads us to eat a lot of the wrong things. Food companies have an overwhelming incentive to design products that lead us ever further down this chemically induced addiction to foods that make us overweight, more prone to disease, and less able to work and enjoy life to the full. This is not freedom ...
Freedom is, most crucially, being free from oppression, violence or discrimination. But it is also the freedom of a child to skip and somersault; of an adult to enjoy running down a country lane or in a city park; of an old person to keep their quality of life until their final days ... These are the freedoms being denied to vast numbers of people who are the victims, not the free agents, in a system that wants to fill them up with salt, sugar and saturated fat.
It is therefore a terrible error to associate conservatism with a reluctance to protect people from their natural appetites being abused, in an industrial age for which they were not designed. If we could liberate more people from that fate, they could enjoy greater personal freedom and have some chance of a lighter tax burden.
MPs who have pressed, seemingly successfully, for the dilution of the obesity strategy are profoundly mistaken. They are acquiescing in a future of higher dependence, greater costs, reduced lifestyle choice and endless pain. For the government to give in to them is intellectually shallow, politically weak and morally reprehensible.
Continue reading...Dame Sharon White follows Tesco chief in urging UK government to help with rising energy and grocery bills
The boss of John Lewis has urged the governmentto intervene with a financial package of support to protect families from the cost of living crisis on the same scale as it did to help the nation deal with the Covid pandemic.
Dame Sharon White, a former second permanent secretary at the Treasury, said the government needed to act urgently as families struggle to pay utility and food costs as energy bills and inflation soars.
Continue reading...Satellite imagery ‘illustrates spectre of rising food prices and hunger’ due to invasion of world’s sixth-largest wheat exporter
Wheat production in Ukraine is likely to be at least a third lower than in normal years, according to analysis of satellite images of the country.
Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat, but the war is taking a toll on the country’s agriculture and food supplies, sparking fears of shortages or higher prices around the world.
Continue reading...Takeaway group in boardroom turmoil after two bosses exit before annual shareholder meeting
Just Eat Takeaway is facing boardroom turmoil after a senior executive stepped down amid an investigation by the courier group into a formal complaint regarding misconduct at a company event.
The board of Just Eat said it would not be putting Jörg Gerbig, its chief operating officer, forward for re-election at the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, as it was due to engage an “external expert” to conduct an investigation into “possible personal misconduct”.
Continue reading...Tesco, Morrisons and Waitrose have limited sales after concerns over shortages caused by Ukraine war
The latest supermarket data from Kantar shows shoppers have been stockpiling cooking oil due to concerns about the shortage of sunflower oil caused by the Russia-Ukraine war.
Here we look at what’s behind the shortages, what the situation means for consumers and how long it might last.
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