The politics of sight: Nature, vegetarianism and the rise of compassion for non-human animals in the city...

On 15 October 2025 I was invited to give a talk on Members Day at the Vegetarian Society in Manchester...

The South Pennines Food Circle

Improving the regional food economy, respecting our natural heritage: The South Pennines Food Circle is an emerging group of local farmers, growers, producers, food businesses and communities with a collective interest in improving the regional food economy in a way that respects the natural heritage of the South Pennines. Current activities involve promoting regional food markets and working with local businesses and community groups to develop a range of food events and infrastructure initiatives. Visit the website by clicking here.

Community Renewal Fund Circular Economy Workshop

In a circular economy workshop for Wakefield Council and the third Sector funded via the Community Renewal Fund, on the 17 October 2022 Dr John Lever from the Department of Management at Huddersfield University involved participants in a series of activities to encourage greater understanding of circular economy. 

John asked participants to bring in an object or product that had the potential to be circular or symbolised circularity. This facilitated a great initial discussion. Following on from this, John gave a talk on key circular economy concepts and resource use statistics before asking participants to think about the health and well-being implications of moving towards a circular economy for their organisation and the wider ecosystem of which it is a part. 

In the final 90-minute activity, participants were put into mixed organisational groups and asked to work through a series of questions to enable collaboration and the design of a new circular venture or activity. The results of this final activity stressed the importance of moving beyond linear thinking in organisation and building circular infrastructure that could better enable collaboration.

Thoughts on the origins and changing significance of #kosher and #halal dietary laws and practice

Earlier this week I read with interest an article in the Smithsonian Magazine about What Archaeology Tells Us About the Ancient History of Eating Kosher. This shed light on and made me reflect on debates about the origins of some of the oldest dietary practices and food assurance regulations we know. 

The underpinning study found evidence that between 539 and 332 B.C (way past the time of Moses) Judeans weren’t following the laws of kashrut, a set of rules in the Torah (the Hebrew Bible) that outline foods that are fit for human consumption (i.e. kosher) and those that are non-kosher (i.e. unfit to eat). The researchers found that during this period Judeans consumed a lot of non-kosher fish (i.e. catfish, skate and shark) but that between 63 B.C. and 324 A.D. the remains of these scaleless fish (scales are the source of many prohibitions) had almost disappeared from ancient trash. A similar study conducted at two ancient Judean settlements found remains of pig bones, which is surprising as the flesh of swine is also strictly prohibited for Jews (and Muslims). This evidence suggests that kashrus dietary prohibitions came into force much later than many scholars assume, which adds weight to claims and mounting evidence that ancient Judeans weren’t strictly kosher

These insights took me back to a study of Food Ways & Daily Life in Medieval Anatolia, which draws on a range or sources, including archaeological evidence, to explore early Islamic food practices. In a discussion of the religious value of certain foods, the authors draw a distinction between pious asceticism (fasting, for example) and carnal instincts (consuming forbidden foods). However, in Medieval Anatolia their evidence suggests that reference to the Islamic dietary terms halal (lawful or permitted) and haram (forbidden) - which can be linked back to key verses in the Quran - were applied to particular servings of food (i.e. this plate of food is halal) rather than specific food categories. The general impression that emerges is that ordinary people in late Medieval Anatolia did not use the (at the time) ‘high-cultured categories’ of halal and haram to refer to categories of food and dietary practice in their everyday lives, as they did later, but to general patterns of behaviour.

These insights can be aligned with contemporary geographies of religious food practice, which fluctuate in significance across space, time and place, and often have greater or lesser degrees of importance to different cultural and religious groups.

Project Information: A Safe and Just Local Food System

As it unfolded, the #Covid-19 crisis drew attention to the task of moving the food system into a “safe” (within planetary boundaries) and (socially) “just” operating space that can provide sufficient resources to meet humanity’s needs without outstripping the planet’s environmental capacity to provide for these needs (Rockstrom et al., 2009; Raworth, 2017; Velenturf and Jopson 2019). 

As the recent bush fires in Australia – which killed tens of thousands of farm animals and burnt innumerable crops – demonstrated, there are other dangerous ecological crises on the horizon. The UK food system is not immune from such crises and the countries we depend upon for food will be negatively affected in by these trends in the coming decades. We thus need to plan and develop local, circular and regenerative methods for growing and producing food if we are to make our food system more resilient to future shocks (Lang 2020; Steel 2020; Firbank et al. 2018; Lever et. al 2019).

Funded by the University of Huddersfield (alongside work conducted by academic partners from University of Leeds), this project aims to enhance the resilience of the local food system in West Yorkshire by bringing together a network of key stakeholders in and around Kirklees to; 1) understand the pressure points in food supply and demand during the #Covid19 crisis; 2) the solutions that emerged, and; 3) and the innovations required to enhance the resilience of the local food economy going forward. Please get in touch if you can contribute!