Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 22nd June 2025

Dear Friends,

David Martin writes:

The drive to market cheap food has resulted in pollution of air, soil and water, destruction of wildlife and waste of raw materials. Try to buy local, fair-traded and organically produced food and eat fresh food in season. Consider whether you could grow some of your own.

Green Advices and Queries #7

I’m always surprised at how few Quakers regard food as an important issue, so this advice from the Green Advices and Queries produced by QPSW struck a chord with me. Henry Dimbleby, in his book Ravenous sets it out the position clearly:

Diet related disease is now the biggest cause of preventable illness and death in the developed world – far greater than smoking. Food production is responsible for a third of global carbon emissions and is the single biggest cause of biodiversity collapse, deforestation and water pollution.

I volunteer at a primary school and run the gardening club. Last week we harvested our first peas and it was a joy to see the young faces when we popped open a pod and found real peas inside! Not in a packet, but in the garden!

We can’t all grow our own food (though cultivating a few herbs on the windowsill counts in my book). However, we can all think about where we buy our food and what food we choose to buy. When the Ethical Consumer magazine reported on supermarkets last year it scored Co-op and Waitrose as most ethical, with Tesco and Asda rated as least ethical. So we do have choices.

“Come to meeting for worship with heart and mind prepared”. (Advices and Queries 9).

Each week the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) invites a Friend to write a message to help us to prepare for our Sunday meeting and to sustain us if we are unable to come. Our meeting is enriched by the diversity of our members and these messages help us to share and learn from others. Every contributor writes from their own experience as an individual, recognising that others may think differently.