A Guide to Developing a Sustainable Food Purchasing Policy

I discovered this new resource for policy-makers and advocates via Walking-the-Talk, the website of the BC Working Group on Sustainability Education:

A Guide to Developing a Sustainable Food Purchasing Policy 

Some background from this document:

This document is intended to help universities, colleges, hospitals, and other institutions – as well as those advocating for food system change – create, promote and implement practical sustainable food purchasing policies. It draws from the successes and lessons learned by a variety of institutions, and from the experience of for-profit and non-profit partnersthat have worked with institutions in this arena. This document does not promote any particular policy positions, butrather offers a framework to help you develop policies that will be meaningful and achievable for your institution.

This document is a product of the Sustainable Food Policy Project, which was initiated in 2006 to support efforts by educational, healthcare and other institutions to have a positive impact on the food system through purchasing. The Project has three primary objectives:

1. To collect and share sample food purchasing policies addressing a range of social and environmental concerns, as well as related requests for information (RFIs), requests for proposals (RFPs) and contract language.

2. To identify and outline sustainable food purchasing policy options, the implications of these policies for institutions, and their potential for beneficial impacts on the food system.

3. To share insights on the policy development process, and on the implementation and evaluation of sustainable food purchasing policies, drawing from the experience of representatives, constituents and stakeholders of institutions that have gone down this road.

Participating organizations include:

• Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a membership-based association of colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada working to create a sustainable future.
• Food Alliance, a non-profit organization that creates market incentives for socially and environmentally responsible agricultural practices, and that educates business leaders and other food system stakeholders on the multiple benefits of sustainable agriculture.
• Health Care Without Harm, a global coalition of 443 organizations in 52 countries working to protect health by reducing pollution in the health care industry.
• Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, a non-profit organization that promotes resilient family farms, rural communities and ecosystems around the world through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy.
• Oregon Center for Environmental Health, a membership organization dedicated to protecting public health and the environment through community action to eliminate toxic pollutants.

More information and sample purchasing policies can be found at www.SustainableFoodPolicy.org.

Planet Green stays on my 2008 reading list

Do you ever feel like this frog in a pond of aquatic plants,  drowning in the sea of blogs?

One of my decluttering and simplifying steps during this first week of 2008 is to discontinue all but two of my RSS subscriptions on environmental/sustainability topics. This has nothing to do with their quality, which is excellent.  Unfortunately, I just can't read fast enough to keep up with the volume of posts.  It seems pointless to keep "starring" articles I have no time to read critically or with a view to changing my behavior. I think a better strategy will be to set aside time periodically to do focused searches on Grist, Treehugger and Worldchanging.

In a recent post, I mentioned that Planet Green is quickly becoming one of my favourite blogs -- a daily must-read. It's one of the two environmentally-flavoured RSS feeds I'm keeping.  Actually, calling it "green" or "environmental" is too limiting. Nearly everyday there are posts that can be tagged with "health", "food", "cooking", "nutrition", and most of all, "practical."

Here are a few of today's posts -- I've selected the ones I think would interest other dietitians:

• Soup of the Week
• Follow the 3-Month Rule for Fruits & Vegetables
• Cook with Foods that Fight Cancer

I'm particularly looking forward to Kelly Rossiter's series of posts on this third topic. She writes:

We are constantly inundated with studies and information regarding food that is potentially cancer causing, as well as foods that we should avoid eating to reduce the likelihood of the disease. When studies conflict, it becomes difficult to know what to believe. Richard Beliveau and Denis Gingras are taking the opposite tack and are writing about foods that we should be including regularly in our diet. ....Beliveau is a professor of biochemistry and the chair in the prevention and treatment of cancer at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Gingras is a researcher in the Molecular Medicine Laboratory of UQAM-Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal. Together, they have come up with a common-sense book which carefully outlines the properties of these foods and why they are so efficacious.

World Food Day 2007: The Right to Food

Note to readers:  I often think I should subtitle many of my posts "explorations and confessions of a novice" because absolute beginner is my competence rating for many topics that I'm interested in, if not enthusiastic or passionate about.  The following post is a perfect example of an issue about which I am consciously ignorant , but would like to understand and act upon.

If you are a Dietitians of Canada (DC) member, you probably received an email earlier this week with a news release  about World Food Day, which was October 16th. 

I admit until this past year I hadn't given World Food Day much more than a passing thought.  As a *clinical* dietitian working in an acute care hospital, I  felt the annual observance highlighted important issues but didn't have direct relevance to my practice.  After all, I'm  occupied with nutrition support, dietetic intern education and patient food service issues as opposed to population or global hunger problems.  But Dr. Elaine Power's statement in the DC news release reminded me:

“Registered dietitians have a role to advocate for social policies that address disparities and inequalities affecting the health of Canadian families.”

The personal message I take from this: think beyond the hospital walls.  And I really don't have to expand my world-view very far.  Extending my thoughts just a few blocks northeast from where I am sitting and typing brings me to a neighbourhood of extreme poverty and food insecurity, Vancouver's DTES, which  you may have heard described as the "poorest postal code in Canada."

This month,  as I work through the Continuing Competence Program (a requirement of my College),  I've decided to include in my Professional Development Plan learning about global food security issues, including defining my role as an advocate for social change.  Here are are the first learning resources I will be consulting:

DC's position papers

Community Food Security 
Individual and Household Food Insecurity in Canada  & Executive Summary

Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations

World Food Day 2007
The Right to Food Virtual Library

Addendum to previous post

JB MacKinnon of the 100 Mile Diet blog revisits his question "Can Vegetarianism Go Local" (parts 1 and 2) with this follow-up piece.

Can one be a locavore AND a vegetarian?

Yesterday and today the 100 Mile Diet blog published a two-part series that thoughtfully considers this question:

Can Vegetarianism Go Local? (part 1, part 2) 

This blog and the local eating philosophy are challenging my thinking. My rationale for being a vegetarian has evolved over the past 25 years (and to be honest, so has the strictness of my adherence). My current list of reasons why includes a desire to eat the "greenist" (as in most environmentally-sustainable) diet possible.

The author (JBM) describes some of the complexities in trying to be vegetarian locavore. Here are a two:

• [A] plant-based diet will be possible in many places.....In some places, though, it won’t....The Inuit of the far north, for example, could not likely exist within their chosen ecology without animal foods and products. If eating within the ecological limits of a place requires the consumption of animal foods, what does that mean to the vegetarian philosophy?
  
• [A food systems study] which appeared in Food Policy in 1998, looked at full life-cycle analyses for various types of diet in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of protein, beta carotene, and calories. The least greenhouse-gas intensive diet proved to be “domestic [local] vegetarian.” But it’s important to note that a local non-vegetarian diet proved to be more environmentally sustainable than an “exotic” vegetarian diet with foods travelling long distances and frequently being eaten out of season.

Although JBM does not end his article with answers and I know I have lots of  research, critical thinking and self-examination ahead of me, I think these concluding statements can be a helpful guideline for making choices:

Ecology is complicated, and can only truly be considered case by case with an eye on the big picture. Or, put another way, it can only really be considered locally, with an eye to Planet Earth.