Catherine has lived many food-related lives before taking part in The Food Conversation. A former teacher, Catherine used to manage the restaurant in her family’s garden centre. Here, she prioritised quality “farm to table” meals. “It was important,” she says, “that I was supplying food I could stand over.” After this, Catherine started a catering business, gaining contracts with Mencap, Queens University Belfast, and a range of other organisations. In her personal life, as a mother, she has three children with various dietary needs. Her eldest has a dangerous peanut allergy, her middle daughter is vegan, and her youngest daughter has a renal condition.

On this, she says: “It became clear to me very early on in feeding my children that you cannot depend on what you’re buying in the supermarkets in terms of those super-processed foods. We’ve cut so much out of our diets to be honest with you. Do we really need 42 different additives and ingredients added to a chicken dish, stuck on a cold shelf? There has to be a way of simplifying these processes and taking out all of those scary chemicals and additives. It's no wonder, thinking back to my teaching career, we have so many children with attention issues and dietary issues and allergy issues.”

But it wasn’t Catherine’s professional or personal experiences with food that drew her to take part in The Food Conversation. Instead, she was motivated by what she was seeing in her local area and the public at large.

“I live in an agricultural community so taking part in The Food Conversation was quite eye opening to me as to just how much of a rough deal the farmers are getting. These super farms are, frankly, quite terrifying.”

By super farms, Catherine’s referring to large-scale factory farms, also called ‘megafarms,’ that are increasing in number around the country. Many of these farms, which are often chicken and cattle farms, are concentrated in areas such as Norfolk and the Wye and have come under intense scrutiny for their toxic pollution and poor animal welfare.

For Catherine, our current food system is the link between farmers getting a raw deal and declining citizen health: “Food connects to so many problems we’re facing right now. We have big issues with how we produce food and how we treat those who produce it, and then we have the issues with how food is processed. I’m concerned for my children’s health, most definitely, but I’m also concerned about the health of the general population because we are eating ourselves to sickness and this isn’t just about the individual. It's about our services, our healthcare. If we don’t get a handle on how our food is produced and we don’t look after the people who produce our food, the huge health crisis we have already is going to get a lot worse.”

Farming is where it all starts, the “root and branch” as Catherine puts it, and it’s what stood out to her the most in her experience of taking part in The Food Conversation. “What I came away with was that if we lose our farming industry, we're in big trouble.”

To address the unfairness levied against UK farmers in the current food system, Catherine wants to see government take food and farming more seriously. “It’s time for action,” she says, “I’m looking at in terms of now, the near-future, and also in the further future as the next generation comes along. I have a grandson and I’m very focused on what he’s eating, you know, trying to make sure there’s a lot of fresh produce in there.”

Solutions is what Catherine is all about. Since taking part in The Food Conversation, Catherine has been busy sharing findings from The Food Conversation with family, friends, and politicians:

“I'm talking to everybody. It’s going to be a huge uphill battle but if you're facing a big, big hill, you start one step at a time. Break it down into small, manageable chunks, give yourself a time plan, give yourself an end goal and work towards it. And if something doesn't work, don't be defeated. Go back to the beginning and start over again. Talk to different people and eventually we'll get there. I think there has to be a diplomatic way of addressing all of these things, bringing these people together and building a common agenda and a common goal. We can’t afford to sit back and do nothing.”