Our Strike Against the Industrial Food System: Why We Mill Our Own
Hello again, flour lovers.
If you follow us, you’ll know I usually have a light dusting of our product on my person. It’s in my hair, under my nails, and in every single thing we bake. But there’s another way I’m immersed in flour every day: the numbers, and the principles behind them.
We’ve talked about what fresh truly means (it’s a matter of days, not months). We’ve championed the health of our farmers, because paying them fairly is the bedrock of this new-old system we’re building.
Today, we want to talk about our strike.
We draw inspiration from a forgotten group of heroes: the Dunnes Stores strikers. In 1984, in Dublin, ten checkout workers, mostly young women, were suspended for refusing to handle South African grapefruit in solidarity with those fighting apartheid. Their stand was simple: “We will not handle the fruits of an exploitative system.”
For nearly three years, they stood on a picket line, enduring hardship to make a point the world could not ignore. They didn’t fight the whole system at once; they targeted a single, symbolic product and took a principled stand.
We see our work at Fresh Flour in the very same light.
The global industrial food system, with its ruinous appetite for profit, is our apartheid. It exploits farmers, hollows out our high streets, and feeds us nutritionally-empty, chemical-laden products. Our stand is a refusal to be complicit.
Here is our picket line:
We Have Identified Our "Grapefruits". For us, it’s not just one fruit, but the very staples of the industrial pantry: dried pasta, dried noodles, crackers, and biscuits. These are the everyday products that the global system has turned into cheap, anonymous commodities.
We Are Refusing to Handle the "Fruits" of That System. We go far beyond just criticising the flour from centralised mills, often used by ‘artisan bakers’. We refuse to buy it. In fact, we go two critical steps further:
We buy only UK - mainly local, organic grain directly from farmers we know and pay fairly.
We micro-mill it ourselves, reclaiming the process and guaranteeing its freshness and vitality.
We are not just opting out. We are actively building the alternative, right here, on our high street.
Our Acts of Solidarity
By taking this stand, we stand in solidarity with:
The Farmer: Whose skilled work growing heritage grains is valued, not exploited.
The Local Community: Whose high street gains a real, meaningful business that creates jobs.
You, The Eater: Who has a right to food that is truly nourishing, in body and soul.
Building this new system is hard. The struggle is personal, financial, and physical. But like the Dunnes Strikers, we believe this hardship is the proof of our commitment. It is the price of building something honest.
A Sensitive and Powerful Conclusion
We are mindful of the profound difference between fighting a racist state and fighting a corrupt food system. But the lesson from the Dunnes Strikers isn't about equating the struggles; it's about learning from the courage of those who saw an injustice connected to their own lives and said 'Not in my name.'
They saw that a grapefruit in a Dublin supermarket was connected to the brutality of apartheid. We see that a bag of industrial flour is connected to the exploitation of our landscape, the decline of our high streets, and the malnourishment of our communities.
So, our stand is a small, deliberate one. We are the checkout workers of the food system, and we are refusing to handle the 'grapefruit'—in our case, the anonymous flour that fuels the industrial machine.
We are building Fresh Flour as a picket line that everyone can cross—not by walking out, but by walking in.
When you choose our pasta, our noodles, our crackers, or our flour, you are not just making a purchase. You are joining a strike for a better food future. You are casting a vote for a system built on solidarity, not exploitation.
Thank you for your support.
The Fresh Flour Team