Researching What We Eat
In the film The End of the Line we see the role that consumers can play by making informed choices about the food they buy.
Most people buy their groceries in a supermarket. This activity asks you to find out what information different supermarkets provide to consumers.
Investigating your local area
Make a list of the different supermarkets in your area.
Now use an internet search engine to see if there are any other places in a 5-10 mile radius where shoppers might be able to buy fish, for example, fishmongers or small-scale shops and suppliers.
Now that you have a list of the places shoppers could buy fish in your local area, you need to do some further research into these focusing on the following questions:
- Do supermarkets, fishmongers and others give shoppers information about the source of the fish they sell (where it was caught) and the fishing method used to catch the fish?
- Does the shop or supermarket have a policy on the kind of fish they sell? This could relate to the particular species of fish as well as the fishing or fish-farming methods used.
Once you have gathered this research you will need to write up your findings. Think about the following questions as a way of organising the data:
How many choices of outlet are available to consumers in your local area? Are these all similar outlets (i.e. all supermarkets) or is there a range of options?
- What information do these outlets provide to their consumers on the origin of the fish and the fishing methods used to catch it?
- What emphasis do the different outlets place on the information they provide to consumers?
- Were there any common features of the policies/approaches of different outlets (if there was a policy)?
- Were there any surprises in the information you collected?