Transcript
Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. This is the Red Eye Podcast. You can hear our live broadcast on Saturday mornings from 10 till noon at 100.5 FM in the Lower Mainland.
Speaker: On the podcast today, Laurentism speaks with Alyssa Overend about increased grocery store surveillance amid rising hunger and food insecurity.
Speaker: Body cameras and increased security in grocery stores are a corporate response to concerns about retail theft. But at the same time, profits in the grocery sector are on the rise, food prices are going up, and food insecurity is widespread.
Speaker: About one-quarter of all Canadians face food insecurity. Alyssa Overend teaches and researches in the areas of health, food, and intersectional equity. Alyssa is associate professor in the Department of Sociology at McEwen University, and I've reached them today in Edmonton.
Speaker: Hello, Alyssa. Hello. I am in, yes, chillier than than average Edmonton today. Okay. You say that militarized surveillance systems are becoming the new normal in many Canadian grocery stores. What does that look like?
Speaker: Well, I think we all might have seen some of this sort of pop up or creep up in the ear collectively odd and strange years of the pandemic. And there was a lot of chaos and a lot of things going on through that time. But also through that time was increasing food insecurity, um which was starting to creep up even before the pandemic. So you did see some of the major change start to implement ah security guards, usually around checkouts and those types of things, particularly probably to keep the peace and to prevent theft in in the presence of them. We're also starting to see more presence of body cameras. There's been a handful of retail stores across the country that have started putting body cameras on checkout clerks.
Speaker: ah So militarization, I think for me, just broadly means the presence of more police. And I think we're seeing this in lots of different places across the globe and in Canada and now in grocery stores too.
Speaker: What do we know about why grocery stores are bringing this in? They do speak about increase in theft, which has been, again, on the creep or on the rise. I don't have exact statistics on over the years how much more of it. I think any retail agency will always have some kind of loss due to theft.
Speaker: But they claim an average profit shrink, so a loss of about 1.4% in So a fairly small percentage, but given that their profits are so high, the total number is also quite high. So it is in the millions.
Speaker: Part of that is the increase in self-checkouts. So whether people are doing it on purpose or by accident or taking advantage of the lack of eyes around the self-checkout, we do start to see some increase around the wider spread use of self-checkouts.
Speaker: Now, one in four Canadians faces food insecurity. To me, this is an absolutely shocking number. What do we know about that? it's ah It's a horribly shocking number for a number of reasons. When you add up the total numbers, it's close to 10 million Canadians.
Speaker: Canada is the ninth largest world economy. We are a first world nation. We also live at a time when there's actually more food produced in the global food system than we ever have. So the problem is actually not a lack of food. We do see food is thrown out at the farm level, at the level of transportation, at the retail level, and of course, at households. So the issue from a critical food studies perspective, it's not a lack of food, it's a lack of access to food. And so as food is increasingly bought and sold in a commercial or capitalist system, you do see with the price points increasing, fewer and fewer people being able to access that.
Speaker: The thing that's really surprising about that number as well, if you are following some of the rates of food insecurity, we know that ah homeless people, for example, or houseless people have long had food insecurity. But what we're actually seeing now in Canada is that people with employment, part-time or full-time employment,
Speaker: are the ones that are also seeking out food bank resources. And so it's not just a problem of the underclass or the extremely poor. We're starting to see these rates creep up into ah the working poor and some of the lower middle classes.
Speaker: And I expect that not everyone is equally affected by this. So some people would be more affected. Yeah, and that's ah exactly where I was going to go next with it. Statistics don't always tell the whole story. Certainly, we've seen marginalized or vulnerable communities in Canada long vulnerable to food insecurity, Black and Indigenous communities being high among ah those communities, new immigrants, migrant laborers, seniors, and also children are a vulnerable group. But of course, we're looking at children of those marginalized groups specifically. So on the one hand, we have increased surveillance of store customers. And on the other, we have food insecurity and hunger. Whose interests are being protected in this situation where, you know, monitoring of customers is being amped up?
Speaker: think that's what what really frustrates me. And I will say when I was first asked to do the story with the Conversation Canada, i teach and and work in a sociology department, but I'm not a criminologist. And when I first looked at the sort of focus on surveillance, I thought, well, this is something more for my crim colleagues. And I was asked to do it because of my expertise in food systems. And the more I thought about it, the more i think This is actually yet it dovetails into surveillance societies and and the militarization of society.
Speaker: But the antics of grocery stores are not new. Whether we're looking at the protection of profits, as you say, so they're they're they're paying security staff in Manitoba. they put They pay off duty police officers and they're paying them over five years. it It adds up to millions of dollars. So they're investing in these systems rather than lowering their food prices. um And for me, it was a little bit of the the straw that broke the camel's back, although the the camel was probably already failing a little bit. It wasn't that long ago, a few years back, where we had the the bread price fixing scandal, where large grocery chains were colluding to up their bread prices by 5, 10, 15 cents. um But ultimately, that ends up in hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars in profit for them.
Speaker: We also see the issue of checkout charities. So I think we've all been asked various questions at the checkout about whether we want to you know stop ah cancer rates for young children. And, you know, you're sort of forced to say no, even though, of course, you want to. But ah ah these large chains are getting massive write-offs for that. There was also a case just last week about fudging the numbers on the weight of meat and then charging consumers more for something that actually weighs less than than what they're paying for. so on and so forth. The migrant laborers that are often used to bring farm foods to the grocery store, again, horrible working conditions. Retailers that work in these are often minimum wage paid employees with little to few benefits.
Speaker: So no matter where you look, it is a highly profitable industry off the backs, again, of of hungry people. And I think no matter how you add it up, it doesn't sit right for a lot of people.
Speaker: Well, and and I guess there's a question, is this policing saving customers money that, you know, that would be offloaded from food theft? I think that might be an argument that the companies could make.
Speaker: It's an argument they try to make. It doesn't hold up. And I have checked with my criminology colleagues. A lot of these surveillance systems, body cameras, you know, the security guards at checkouts, they may deter theft a bit, but ultimately there's a whole bunch of issues with the surveillance systems, particularly the body cameras. By the time someone comes to...
Speaker: the checkout, they may have already stolen something, so it might detect it, but it doesn't prevent it. Obviously, checkout clerks can't be everywhere, and some of these big box stores are getting increasingly large. So unless you have them on every aisle and every shelf, which of course there's a huge cost to do so, they're not preventing theft there either.
Speaker: There's difficulties with facial recognition or detection based on the scope of the camera and all kinds of issues. So they're they're kind of funneling money into something that's not actually that effective. Perhaps I'm an idealist, but I kind of wonder if we take a more radical or or alternative approach to feeding hungry people, we might see less of this food theft happening. There will probably always be some, but I think the rise in food theft does go along with the rise in food insecurity, and and we can't ignore that fact.
Speaker: What about the impact on people being surveilled while they shop as well? You're just going to the store to try and get some food. yeah I think that's what sort of irks me too. I just, you know, i want to go and and, you know, it's already a little stressful. You got your list. It might be busy. You're thinking, did I forget everything? And then you have this sort of ominous presence of a guard that's often in full uniform. To my knowledge, they're not armed, but perhaps in Manitoba, where I said they have those off-duty police officers, perhaps they are. I think they have tasers or zip ties or these types of things. And it doesn't really give a kind of welcoming environment.
Speaker: And it gives the sense that you're there, maybe not as ah as a customer, but as someone to be watched or monitored. And if you've ever just run in and maybe not used a basket instead of your bags, you find someone sort of watching you down the aisles. it it again, doesn't give a very nice feeling of of when you are shopping.
Speaker: Now, you say that the global food system is producing more food now than at any time in history. Why is this not improving food security and accessibility? Yeah, great question. And I think it's an important question.
Speaker: We talk a lot about, or I hear this phrase, like the global food system is an efficient system. It's actually the least efficient system. um If you want to think about growing food, why would you grow something that grows locally for the most part? Some things do need to be shipped in and out and around the world, but a lot of the stuff we get from the grocery store can be grown locally. So it makes no sense to grow it three, four, or five countries over or continents apart.
Speaker: Pick it, package it, ship it. There's issues with transportation. So we do see food loss at the level of the farm, at the level of transportation, and at the level of the food retailer.
Speaker: People might remember in the pandemic years, grocery store stock dwindled. And that's again, another marker of this kind of ah fragile system. I think when the when the aisles are sort of plush and full, we think there's ah there's an abundance of food. And certainly in many Western grocery stores there are. But as soon as you see border closures increase in fuel prices, which of course we're seeing yet again, ah food prices increase, but you can also have food being held up at borders, food not making it to the locations where they are intended to go. And we've already seen this in in Canada's north where there's major issues with accessibility, affordability and just supply and demand.
Speaker: So it is actually the least efficient system. And the food waste, as I mentioned, sort of comes at all levels of the food chain. There's been a lot of discussion in terms of the shape and size of requirements that grocery stores like for a lot of their produce. So farmers will purposely grow double the amount of whatever it is, Brussels sprouts, and then pick the ones that grocery stores like.
Speaker: They might be able to use some for compost or maybe they have a connection with a local farmer's market, ah but a lot of that gets wasted. Grocery stores also will lock their bins because they know that throwing out that much food is bad PR. So we're not actually able to see how much they are throwing out. But certainly for people who've worked in grocery stores, a lot of that perishable stuff does go to waste.
Speaker: Where does the concentration of the retail food industry into these five big corporations in Canada fit into this picture of rising costs and and the increase in food insecurity?
Speaker: Yeah, great question. And another kind of marker of the the times that we're living in, whether we're looking at the the consolidation or corporate concentration of media, um which is something I know many people are aware of. We're seeing this in food industry too.
Speaker: ah So about five retailers in Canada control about 80% of the market. And that's where you can start to get into some difficulties again around collusion, around price fixing and other price markers. And then they also eke out some of the smaller grocery stores and smaller mom and pop shops. So I think anytime you see that much centralization or concentration, you see less and less of that food supply, which ultimately should be more decentralized and more centralized in community or local food systems.
Speaker: What are some of the places, Alyssa, that we can look to to start to find solutions to this problem of this, I would call, broken food system?
Speaker: Yeah, it's it's a broken food system. and And it's been broken for, I would say, a while, ah probably, you know, two to three decades. I think you start to see community gardens and farmers markets pop up, you know, as the rise of commercial food industry also emerges. So through the 70s and 80s in Canada, you did start to see the beginnings of those systems. And certainly as more and more people...
Speaker: move into cities, maybe move off farms where they had some of their own access to food, you do start to see more of that centralization creeping.
Speaker: The question you ask is something that I've been undertaking in ah in a new research study. Coming out of the pandemic, I was kind of curious. I knew there were More farmers markets in Edmonton as one example. We used to have three. Now I think there's six or seven with a bunch of smaller community ones in there through the summer months.
Speaker: That's an increase. They're always busy. People seem to have a renewed interest in them. Community supported agriculture is another example where people can buy directly from farms in their local area and get boxed shipments of things that are at a often equivalent or sometimes cheaper than the grocery store.
Speaker: They're also a way better quality. If you eat something that was picked that morning or the day before that you're getting from a farmer's market or a CSA, i would guess again that it's going to taste a lot better than the stuff that's been sitting on ah a plane or picked prematurely so that it can ripen in time to sit on the grocery store shelves.
Speaker: um So the research project was just ah a kind of simple question of like how many of these alternative food networks, for lack of a better framing, are out there. And I started doing cross provincial analysis. I started with Alberta, BC. I will say BC fares quite well, perhaps unsurprisingly. i think BC has a bit of a longer growing season. I think there's a little bit more appetite for good quality food, farmers market CSAs and those types of things. But I was actually quite heartened to see the amount of community organizations, CSAs, farmers markets, and other food alternatives, seed banks, community orchards, community gardens, that these things are really, really thriving. And I think a lot of people will be surprised just to see how much of these things are available and how many Canadians are starting to have
Speaker: ah deeper conversations about their food and where it comes from. Well, it's been great talking to you about this. Thank you so much, Alyssa. Thanks so much for having me. And thanks for the interest in the work. I think it's ah something we all need to keep talking about. And hopefully we do.
Speaker: I've been speaking with Alyssa Overend. Alyssa is associate professor in the Department of Sociology at McEwen University. And you can find their article in theconversation.ca. It's called Policing the Grocery Store Checkout Won't Fix Canada's Food Retail Crisis.
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Speaker: I'm Jane Williams. Thanks for listening.
