Age group: Pioneers

How long it will take: 1 hour

What materials you will need:

• big sheet of paper with the ‘food’ clause of the declaration written on it: "Food production and associated markets should promote reasonably priced organic, non genetically modified, and locally produced food as a move towards sustainable living, and fair prices for farmers."
• some copies of the 'Get it labelled' sheet (or a copy on a big sheet of paper)
• coloured pens and pencils
• paper
• sticky labels (a roll of address labels would be fine, or even post-its at a push)
• a basket of food including fresh fruit and veg, preferably with some knowledge of where it was grown. Alternatively, if you meet near a store some of the group could go out and buy some food as part of the activity.

The aim of the activity: To explore the issue of food labelling.

What to do:

A good starting game for this group night would be this version of the game ‘Fruitbowl’:

• Sit in chairs in a circle – someone is in the middle and their chair is taken away
• Name everyone round the circle in turn – raspberries, rhubarb, peaches, pears (or any fruit you like really)
• The person in the circle calls out one of the fruits – all those fruits have to run into the circle and change places, and the one in the middle has to try and sit down
• The new person in the middle calls out another fruit
• If they call ‘fruitbowl’, everybody has to get up and change places

The activity:

Sit in a circle and quickly distribute the food so every person (or every two or three) has an item.

Ask: what information is on the food about where it comes from? If it is unpackaged food, was there any more information in the shop? Is there any useful information about how the ingredients were grown or made?

Find out if everyone knows about the food proposal in the declaration made at camp; ask someone to explain to anyone who doesn’t.

There are several important issues in the food proposal: organic production methods, genetic modification of food, local produce (food miles), fair trade. Does everyone understand how these issues link to sustainable living? The information in this food pack should help explain things. Was any information about these issues on the food you brought in?

The aim of the evening is to design a labelling scheme that would tell us about all these issues when we buy food.

People could either design labels that covered all the issues, or they could concentrate on one or two. Use lots of pictures and colours – the labels need to be easy to read.

Hand out the 'Get it labelled' sheet to help. Try and get all the food you brought in labelled by the end of the session!

Discuss the labelling schemes at the end.

• What are the good things about labelling schemes?
• The bad things? (Who manages them, for instance – how do you make sure they are true, especially if food comes from a long way away?)

Once you have got the labelling scheme sorted, perhaps you could try and publicise the idea – send it somewhere (‘Sustain’ works for better labelling – see the links list on the main 'Food' page of this website), write to MPs or councillors, do a press release…