What is the purpose of the Guide? To help people responsible for buying and preparing food to ensure it is more sustainable.

How do I use the Sustainable Food Guide? The Guide is based on a classic quality managment system, so you follow the usual steps - review, gain commitment etc, produce a policy - follow the system along the top navigation bar.

How can we say whether the food is more "sustainable"? Ask first: "Could we carry on eating like this indefinately?". If the answer is no - which is the case for many conventional methods, then the SF Guide helps you to work with other stakeholders to improve sustainability and assess progress using targets and indicators.

Are there any standards/schemes/logos for sustainable food? No, although there are schemes for certain foods, there are no overall standards. We believe that while 3rd party accreditation has merits, it is better to involve all interested parties in determining whether there is progress towards sustainability. Use our indicators and measures, drawn up with the help of the International Institute for Environment and Development, to assess your own standards.

Who can use the SF Guide? It is intended for any people at work - supervisors, skilled workers or union reps as well as supervised workers. The SF Guide helps all people at work to DO things differently and as such could lead to national occupational standards of competence - if you know anybody interested please contact us.

How do we improve food sustainability? You can choose whatever issue concerns you most - whether it be animal welfare or use of GM crops and find out about the issues involved. The issues are linked on the left hand navigation. We use a classic PIP Approach - Outline the Problem (Issues), then find out related Information (standards or regulations) then Plan what to DO. This then feeds into the overall management system.

More Food Related FAQs...