Food campaign for a Sustainable Livestock Bill

Friends of the Earth has got an MP - Robert Flello - to take forward our Sustainable Livestock Bill to tackle the environmental impact of the intensive meat and dairy industry. We have lobbied Hornsey MP Lynne Featherstone to support it - as a minister she can vote for such Bills if the government isn't explicitly opposing it. We are also seeking a meeting with Tottenham MP David Lammy to get him to vote on the crucial Second Reading of the Bill on 12 November.

We have also asked Haringey to include the impact of livestock feed in its sustainable food procurement code, being developed now.

We launch the campaign

While blackcaps and song thrushes sang in the Railway Fields Nature Reserve in Haringey, FOE food campaigner Vicki Hird explained the link between our consumption of meat and dairy, the growing of soya as an animal feed, and the destruction of forests, habitats and communities in South America to an audience of almost fifty people.

The two FOE local groups in the borough - Tottenham & Wood Green, and Muswell Hill and Hornsey - had joined up to hold this outdoor event on one of the first hot evenings of the year. We involved people from the local Sustainable Haringey food growing network, some of whom had been out to forage wild plants from surrounding areas that we ate in a salad on the night, along with loads of other organic, Fair Trade and local food (and wine) that group members supplied. We paid FOE's Supporter Services Unit to mail out invites to the hundreds of people in the area on climate and food campaign mailings lists, and this definitely brought a number of new people along. We also invited all the local councillors - four came, including the new lead member for sustainability. We will definitely be following him up to talk about the council's food procurement policies.

We got most people's contact details on a petition, and their agreement to contact them again on food campaign activities. We then rolled this out publicly at some of the major events in Haringey - Haringey Green Fair on 12th and Tottenham Festival on 19th - and we got hundreds of people signed up to support the Private Member's Bill.