Making a Meal of It

Severn Trent Water is the business providing drinking water and sewage treatment to our home city of Birmingham )and also large swathes of the middle, east and west of England).     It sits, we think, in a uniquely interesting place in the food system....  As part of our exploration of that food system Nick Booth and Kate Cooper (of the Birmingham Food Council) meet Emily Timmins - who is Head of Waste Water Recycling.  As she says it ended up quite wide ranging from  "we are part of an entire, natural system"    "encouraging strips and swales " to  "using poo for modern medicine"      "Ellie Jameson at Warwick"  and even:   "I like a grey drizzly day"    and thought's on "Mansfield's parking spaces" Please enjoy..... 

Ed Salt runs Delamere Dairy - a global business that started with goats milk and grew.   We visited him at his farm in Cheshire where he talked about everything from Otzi the Iceman to Bagpuss and a herd of Labradors!   He tells us  "horsegate was a game changer in retail",  that they "never lowered our milk price to our farmers" a nd explains why "I wouldn't start a food business today".  And, of course, he explains the risks in his business and how they deal with them to make the food system as secure and environmentally positive as possible. 

We spoke to David Roos as the Quality Assurance Director for UK and Ireland for the UK's 5th largest supermarket.  His role at Aldi UK covered pretty much everything we put in our mouths or on our skin.   The questions on his mind: Is it safe? Where does it come from? Will it stay safe? What to do if it goes wrong?  So here he talks to the Birmingham Food Council about risk in the food system.   And we all talk of  "Hot buttered toast and raspberry jam and a cup of tea when I get home.." of “locust bean gum, ethylene oxide and ice cream" or "take a cauliflower, you would think it’s simple product…" and even “Most things that most people believe about the food system are just wrong!”.

In the first episode of the Birmingham Food Council's podcast, Making a Meal of It, Kate Cooper and Nick Booth talk to Parveen Mehta, a man who's responsible for putting fresh fruit and veg on thousands of plates each day. Minor Weir and Willis is a family run business in Birmingham which grows and imports fresh produce for our supermarkets and other key food businesses.   What are the risks in doing that? How does Parveen manage them, what worries him about our food system?   For more on what it takes to feed us visit Birmingham Food Council.