It became clear from both the websites and the interviews that a new sector addressing sustainability had been called into existence by the advent of sustainability as a governance problem for the food supply, and that social sustainability was often but not always part of its remit. The industry comprised individual specialist practitioners – some of whom had adapted other types of expertise, as described by the interviewees – as well as the specialist consultancies, standard-setters, certifiers and advocacy groups investigated here.
One of the earliest examples was the consultancy SustainAbility, founded in 1987 (the year that the Brundtland report appeared), to catalyze business action on Sustainable
Development via the Triple Bottom Line, of which (according to SustainAbility’s co-founder, John Elkington), the most important contribution was inclusion of the social pillar (Elkington 1997). Benchmark Holdings, another sustainability consultancy, was set up in 2000 when its three founders acted on ‘their vision to build a profitable business based on the growing need to create a sustainable and ethical future for global food production’. The auditor Partner Africa was created to conduct the social audits required by European standards.
Other examples of entities that existed specifically to address sustainability-related concerns included the business advisory group Forum for the Future; the business indexer FTSE4Good; the advocacy organisations IDH: the sustainable trade initiative, Sustain: the alliance for Food and Farming and The Natural Step; and the standard-setter the Sustainable Restaurant Association. Giving some indication of the scale of the sector, there were 140 certification bodies accredited to certify to GlobalGAP standards. The certification company Bureau Veritas reported year-on-year growth averaging 14% between 1996 and 2013.
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While it was true that a cadre of specialists and specialist entities had emerged to address sustainability, for many actors, whether organisations or individuals, working on social sustainability in the food supply was just one of a range of things they did. This might affect the expertise and time these actors chose or were able to devote to the issue, as well as how the issue was framed.
Typically, social sustainability was part of a broader sustainability remit. This was the case for the specialist consultancies Robertsbridge and Two Tomorrows, standard-setters such as SAN and Rainforest Alliance, and advocacy organisations such as Sustain: the alliance for Better Food and Farming, all of which tackled all aspects of sustainability. It was also the case for several of the interviewees, such as Is.3 (manufacturing), 4 (retail), 8 (food service), 21 (consultant), and 26 (audit), who worked on all aspects of sustainability at their
respective organisations.
Alternatively, sustainability as a whole might be just one aspect of a job or organisation that focused on other things. This was self-evidently true for supply-chain organisations such as food manufacturers or retailers, where sustainability was just one aspect of their
operations. For some interviewees, too, sustainability was part of a job that was mainly about something else (e.g. Is. 11 and 13, producers of fruit and meat respectively.)
At a greater remove, for several organisations, not only was sustainability just one aspect of its activities, but so was the food supply. This was the case, for example, for the certifiers SGS and Bureau Veritas, which certified to social and sustainability standards alongside safety, environmental and quality standards, in food sectors alongside aviation, minerals and others. The logistics provider Kuehne & Nagel supplied specialist services to the food industry as well as the forest products, emergency and healthcare sectors. The Advocacy Organisation Business in the Community covered a range of issues (including sustainability) in a range of sectors (including the food supply). The trade association the British Retail Consortium covered the whole of retailing, not just food retailing. And the pressure group IIED researched and published on a range of Development issues, but had a prominent work stream on sustainable food supply chains. I.12, the financial analyst, saw food businesses as entities performing well or badly in the market, no differently from others he dealt with.
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And I.17, who had responsibility for policy on social aspects of sustainability as part of the commercial team of a large food service operator, said her job could involve everything
‘from supporting the window cleaning to supporting the purchase of chicken’.
This ‘de-foodifying’ of food (reflected in the common practice of describing it as ‘product’) challenges the exceptionalism sometimes attributed to food, especially in the food
sustainability literature; it may even capture some of the essence of unsustainability that the proponents of alternatives seek to avoid.
6.7 Concluding comments
This chapter has described the entities found to be active alongside the state in the governance of social sustainability in the UK food supply – the governance actors.
The actors were found to be diverse, going beyond starting concepts of categories that might be relevant. They included organisations that produced and distributed food or contributed directly to this by providing agricultural inputs or logistics (actors ‘in’);
organisations that acted within and across sectors, such as trade unions and trade
associations; and a host of organisations that acted ‘on’ the food supply, in ways categorised as consultancy, audit or advocacy. Most of the entities investigated had the legal form of companies: most of the actors ‘in’ were for-profit companies, whereas many of the actors
‘on’ were non-profits, placing the majority of the participants within the ambit and idiom of the business world. However, the structures involved were various and complex, and the complexity was compounded by the size and scale of many of the entities. Provision of information in websites was uneven and there was a lack of transparency on matters such as structure, relations between entities, lines of accountability, and funding arrangements of some of the non-profits. These features, which contextualise the organisations’ work on social sustainability and affect purposes, decision-making processes, priorities and reporting requirements, have the potential to affect the scope, nature and effectiveness of work on social sustainability.
The interviewees occupied a range of roles and had varied backgrounds, implying that social sustainability was not (yet) a settled specialism. However, the interviewees were found to be informed participants in the process of governing sustainability. They came from diverse backgrounds, often having added first sustainability then social sustainability to pre-existing
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responsibilities. They saw their work as constructive, though they had some scepticism about the impact of their work.
Such were the actors found to be ‘doing’ social sustainability in the food supply. The next chapter looks at how these actors interpreted and construed the idea of social
sustainability.
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