Food ethics & how we’re defining them at MIHO.

“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.” Michael Pollan, Omnivore’s Dilemma

Our CEO Kevin Ho told me this book changed his life. It shaped the way he and Juan approached their food philosophy, both personally and for MIHO. Our mission is to source, cook and serve food that is healthy for our bodies, respectful to our animals, and caring for our Earth. And we aspire to do so in a way that is as ethical and delicious as we can.

We’ve always been known for using all-natural, handmade, organic, sustainable, local, farm-fresh, artisan ingredients whenever possible. But what do those words actually mean and who is keeping us accountable? These questions around labels and definitions ultimately led us to tackle a big question: what are our food ethics?

Before we defined those ethics, we had to understand what it means to have ethics. Kevin shared, "It is based on the philosophical belief that in the realm of food - there exists the concepts of right and wrong. Our pursuit is to define what is right and what is wrong. In addition, we seek a deeper understanding of what cannot be so easily delineated. It is with those definitions and understandings that we hope to guide our actions as a business and as individuals."

For the first time, we put pen to paper. Juan, as our Chief Purpose Officer, spearheaded this new initiative and set out to clearly define MIHO's food ethics and create a program that we can use as a guide to lead us into the future. We considered the morality of our food system and culture, which includes the ways in which we grow, harvest, transport, sell, buy, produce and eat food. All of these components will have an impact on the food we end up consuming, so every aspect needed to be studied and looked at when we began this journey. We set out to define what we mean by food ethics, what's involved in the program and then create a tangible measurement tool that will help guide us and to keep us accountable.

We took a cue from Patagonia and designed a rating system for all of our purveyors, which assesses the following three considerations:

Is it good for our HOMI’s, clients and the people who work in the food industry?

Is it good for the plants and animals?

Is it good for the earth?

Those questions are further explored with deeper research into how the workers are treated and paid. Are there fair-trade practices in place? Are certifications or incentives that authenticate and propel their ethical practices? All of these questions are scored and rated for each purveyor. And there is a baseline score that each purveyor must exceed in order to make it on our menus.

In addition to our sourcing framework, we value staff education, so we schedule field trips to places like Pacific Shellfish, Specialty Produce, and Chino Farms. We take our kitchen scraps and compost them at our headquarters - using the nutrient rich soil in our community garden. Our harvest is then used for employee lunches. It’s not a big production, but we’re getting it started and educating our staff so our ethics become ingrained into our culture at MIHO.

The core purpose of our company is "to bring people together", which is the spirit we bring into this exploration of food ethics. As a caterer, we possess a significant influence on what we and our clients eat through how we source our ingredients and how we feature them on our menus. Our commitment is to bring our community along on our journey towards a food system that empowers us to eat a sustainable, fair and healthy diet.

We’ve outlined our ethics and put our sourcing framework into place, but there’s work ahead of us. We’ve made changes, but this will be a constant evolution. We will continue to reflect, change and improve our systems in the years to come. Of all the values we share at MIHO, the strongest is striving to be better and doing what we say we’re going to do. I hope you continue to follow along in this journey with us.

If you're in the industry and want to share insights or learn about our program to create a program for yourself, we'd love to talk. And to all of our our fellow eaters that want to share your personal journey toward ethical eating, we'd also love to hear from you. Drop me a line, lindsey@amihoexperience.com