FOOD is travelling 50 per cent farther before it reaches the supermarket shelf than it did in the late 1970s, a study shows, resulting in a huge increase in traffic and pollution.The rise in "food miles" is a result of the growth of global markets and, in Britain's case, the increasingly catholic taste of a public once content with seasonal fruit and vegetables.
Raspberries from America are on sale during Britain's raspberry season, for example. Apples from New Zealand and South Africa are in the shops while British orchards are grubbed up. Green beans from Kenya pack the supermarket shelves when the same vegetable is in season in Britain.
Food miles are responsible for more than a third of the increase in demand for freight since 1978, says the survey carried out for Safe Alliance, a food and environment group.
The growth in food trade was responsible for a larger increase in freight over the past two decades than any other major commodity. Demand for air-freighted food rose by 15 per cent in the first half of 1994 as Britain emerged from recession.
Last month, the report says, home-grown apples, onions, carrots and green beans were available throughout the country; so too, in three central London supermarkets, were apples imported 4,700 miles from the United States, onions brought 12,000 miles from Australia and New Zealand, carrots 5,100 miles from South Africa and green beans 3,600 miles from Kenya.
The report recommends that customers should choose food in the following order: local, national, EU. It urges retailers to add labels showing food miles and countries of origin.
Mr Hugh Raven, co-ordinator of the alliance, said: "It is madness to fly food half-way round the world when British growers are going out of business - like the American raspberries on sale here at the height of our raspberry season."
