Food Chain Centre

There are pro-big food organisations that have received significant funding from government. A recipient of over £2.3 million in tax-payers money has been the Food Chain Centre (FCC)that was launched to ‘help build more effective and efficient supply chains’.^[1]

It is housed in the Institute of Grocery Distribution, which is joined at the hip with the supermarkets. It represents the interests of big food. Asda, Sainsburys, and Tescos are all on IGD’s Board of Trustees.
The current President of the IGD is David Reid, the non Executive Chairman of Tesco.

The press releases the FCC has issued, are predominantly about improving efficiency of the supply chain and benchmarking which are key concepts that help supermarkets reduce costs, they do not assist farmers become more sustainable.

Carol Trewin is an award-winning journalist who also worked for Taste of the West, a regional food group in the Westcountry. She has stated ‘I feel the people who are going to benefit most from benchmarking are the supermarkets,’.[2]

The Food Chain Centre is a ‘co-founder’ of the Cereals Industry Forum.

Improving Efficiency

In September 2003, this Forum was awarded a major Government grant of £1.4m over three years to ‘improve efficiency and competitiveness in the grain chain’.^[3] Earlier in 2003 the Food Chain Centre was awarded £500,000 to look at improving the efficiency of the milk supply chain.^[4] The partners in the milk supply project included the NFU, the Milk Development Council, the Dairy Industry Association, British Retail Consortium (BRC), and the [[Cardiff Business School]]. The Cardiff consultants are from the Lean Enterprise Research Centre, a centre for excellence on ‘lean’ thinking, a set of ideas pioneered by Toyota to improved efficiency in producing cars. It has a vocabulary such as ‘Muda’ - an activity that creates waste or no value or ‘Poka-yoke’ - a mistake-proofing device.

All these initiatives feed into the so-called ‘efficient’ big food system.

The key academic at the Lean Centre is David Simons who worked with Tesco on a five-year research programme that facilitated 'lean thinking' within the Supply Chain Development Group at Tesco, which aimed to achieve £100 million savings.^[5]Simon is also co-director of the Food Process Innovation Unit at Cardiff that works closely with another Donald Curry initiative, called the Red Meat Industry Forum, which has received over £5.3 million to improve the competitiveness of the British Meat Industry.^[6]

In June 2004 a major new study by the Food Chain Centre and the Red Meat Industry Forum claimed to have discovered potential savings of up to 20% across the pork sausage supply chain. Participants included Tesco and their main suppliers, including pig farmer Jon Easy. The results were welcomed by Tesco and the Food Chain Centre but dismissed by the farmer who actually took part. Jon stated, ‘I think it is unlikely that any of the potential savings discovered willflow back to farmers in future, unless there is a huge change in the whole industry,’.^[7]

In October 2005, the Red Meat Industry Forum received a further £1.5 million from the government, as part of a £8 million package to try and revitalise the British beef sector.[8]

People

The Food Chain Centre has a Steering group that is stacked in favour of farming /food chain interests with only 2 out of the 13 members representing consumer groups. The current chair of the Food Chain Centre is the Chief Executive of the IGD - Joanne Denney-Finch.

Steering committee

• Joanne Denney-Finch - Chairman
• Mark Tinsley - Deputy Chairman
• Peter Barr
• Clive Beddall
• Chris Brown
• Tim Cooper-Jones
• Brian Harding
• Paul Kelly
• Meurig Raymond
• Arthur Reeves
• Chris Ritson
• Christine Tacon
• Robin Tapper
• Jon Woolven

Staff

• Peter Whitehead
• Karen Orford
• Paul Mayfield
• Alec Turnbull

Contact Details

Address: Food Chain Centre at LGD, Grange Lane, Letchmore Heath, Herts WD25 8GD UK.

Tel: 01923 857 141

E-mail: info@foodchaincentre.com

Website: www.foodchaincentre.com

Notes

1. ^http://www.foodchaincentre.com/CIR.asp?cid=30&type=3&subtype=8.
2. ^http://www.spinwatch.org/spaw/images/artwork/Big-food.pdf
3. {Note|3}}http://www.foodchaincentre.com/CIR.asp?cid=40&type=3&subtype=8.
4. ^http://www.foodchaincentre.com/CIR.asp?cid=36&type=3&subtype=8.
5. ^ http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/lom/lerc/research/progs.html.
6. ^ http://www.cf.ac.uk/carbs/research/fpiu/.
7. ^http://www.foodchaincentre.com/CIR.asp?cid=42&type=3&subtype=8; Farmers Guardian (2004) “New Survey Reveals Supply Chain Savings”, 11 June, p89.
8. ^ http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2005/051014b.htm