Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat......or turkey, or pig, or cow, or, er, nuts, or whatever you might be cooking. But how quickly was your festive beast fattened? What kind of life did it have? Where did it come from?
Over the last few months and years I've been getting more interested in our food chain: food production, where it comes from, what happens to it before it's on our plates, not to mention what it does to us when we remove it from our plates by the forkful and shovel it yonder.
It is oft said, but it really is true, that very few people think much or take time to care about where the food they put in their overburdened Christmas supermarket trolley comes from. What I find unfortunate for most people is they don't realise that eating seasonally might actually restore a variety in our eating that would make our diets both healthier and more connected with our immediate environment. Nor do I understand why somebody would want, for example, bland imported strawberries in the winter when the sweetest, freshest berries you will ever taste will be back every summer - no comparison.
I offer two recent examples from BBC news of the curiosities of the global food chain:
The first is cherries from Chile - it hadn't even occurred to me that some people might want fresh cherries from the other end of the planet at Christmas, (what's wrong with the delectable preserved kind, in cakes?) but apparently the supermarkets are well stocked. The counter argument against the green 'food miles' protest was that many growers in such places depend on us buying in out of season produce for their livelihoods. However, I presume that before we gave up seasonal eating in the richer nations of the world the inhabitants of Chile were not starving.
I will never buy the argument that we should purchase things solely to prop up jobs or an industry - however impoverished the people may be, or however much it may benefit the economy. Should we all take up heroin use, lest poppy farmers in Afghanistan go hungry? Should we buy pointless plastic toys from China to keep the factory workers gainfully employed? Do most US processed foods really need to be pumped full of fatty corn syrups for the benefit of agri-businesses, whilst the national waistline balloons?
I also wonder if there aren't crops they can plant otherwise in Chile and elsewhere that might be more useful - instead of producing biofuels from existing corn and maize crops, pushing up food prices, why not replace crops such as the cherries that we don't actually need?
The second example you probably have heard of: Scampi that is being caught off Scotland, frozen, shipped to East Asia, hand picked, shipped to Grimsby, and then breaded and packed. Many people have understandably pointed this out as madness. What astounded me is that a carbon emissions survey commissioned by the company concluded that the new shipping to Asia method was no less green than producing the entire product in the UK, because the Langoustine used to be picked and shelled by machine in Scotland. People, apparently prefer hand picked, and it saves the factory emissions. So well done Young's, a carbon neutral move.
Why though, can they not find people in Grimsby to do the work by hand? Are we in the west above shelling Langoustine? (Though I admit I'm not front of the queue) Could we, in fact, not go to a fish counter, buy something fresh, shell it, bread it and cook it ourselves, and dispense with the need for Young's altogether? If we really live in a country where very few people have time to cook good, fresh food from basic ingredients, we must be spiritually (and nutritionally!) poor indeed, though our material wealth might be huge.
The main problem which no politician would dare confront (for 'choice' is the holy grail, and a pox on the honorable member who should try to restrict it), is our constant desire for things we don't need, shouldn't be able to get, and must have as conveniently and cheaply as possible. The inconvenient truth of our mealtimes is that food is too cheap - we spend the smallest percentage of our income in history on our daily nutrition. Is £40 or so really too much for a delicious free range turkey, sensitively reared, when you consider the many hundreds of pounds a lot of families spend on gifts each year? Or perhaps the probably incredible sum spent on alcohol at Christmas parties.
All of this seems alien to the teaching of Jesus, and alien to the concept of a feast day such as Christmas. I am coming to believe that a festive feast of locally, lovingly produced food, that has been prepared with care by the whole family, that is enjoyed together in fellowship as the central focus of the day, is a thing close to the spirit of Christ - 'who on the night he was betrayed, had supper with his friends' - and that meals shared in that spirit are an essential and enriching part of our common life.
I also believe that the incarnation: God made flesh; teaches us, amongst other things, that this world and all its inhabitants are loved by and matter to God - down to the turkey on our table, the sprouts on our plate and the soil they came from. That means they should all matter to us.
