But where are the bulk of food miles clocked up? Most people's weekly shop in Britain today is still made up principally of food grown in the UK and Europe but extensively transported across the continent. In 1998, 12.2 million pigs, cattle and sheep were transported between EU member states. Lucy Michaels of Corporate Watch has shown that in one Welsh supermarket you can buy beef raised 50 miles away which travels 140 miles to be slaughtered before being taken to a meat-processing centre, then transported to this supermarket chain's centralised distribution centre, before being sent back to the original supermarket, having covered 500 food miles.
Food currently accounts for 40% of Britain's road freight and 25% of its heavy goods traffic. In 1950 there were more than 220,000 food shops in Britain – many of them small, local shops. By the late 1990s this was down to 37,000. The top five supermarkets in Britain now control 88% of the domestic food market. As food processing, packaging and distribution have become more centralised among a smaller number of companies, food in the UK travels 65% further than it did two decades ago.
In the last 15 years supermarkets have increasingly located themselves in American-style shopping malls on the edges of towns, thereby encouraging more use of private transport, and therefore petrol, for shopping. Consumers now travel an average of nearly 900 miles per year by car to shop for food.
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