Top 10%: the Marchioness of Worcester

Tracy, Marchioness of Worcester, has been actively involved in the environmental movement since the 1990s, when she worked as a volunteer with Friends of the Earth. 

Between 1996-1998 she had a market garden selling organic vegetables at farmers’ markets, local stalls and vegetable boxes delivered to local homes. 

As an associate director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture, she worked with Helena Norberg Hodge to kick-start the local food movement in this country by raising funds to set up the Food Links programme. A year later the  programme was taken up by the Soil Association. 

Tracy has worked to move away from dependence on transnational corporations and banks towards local interdependence within smaller units on the local and regional level. She has been a lively advocate of reliable, affordable public transport. 

Her latest focus has been on factory farming and making the film, Pig Business, in order to expose the hidden costs behind the mass-produced pork on our supermarket shelves, hoping that viewers/consumers will use their buying power for good.

Staunchly continuing with showings, despite harassment and threats of litigation by Smithfield, the film has been widely shown at venues around the country, at Westminster and at the EU Parliament earlier this year, to inform politicians, commissioners, councillors and their advisers about the negative impacts of industrial farming on people, pigs and the planet with suggested solutions. 

A showing was organised at the Barbican arts centre in London but on the same day Smithfield’s lawyers told the Barbican’s management that the film was ‘defamatory’. The audience waited half an hour while Tracy and the executive producer were told that the showing would only go ahead if they signed a document agreeing to indemnify the Barbican. 

Newspapers who reviewed the film, including the Daily Mail and The Evening Standard, received warning letters for reporting about the film – as did the Polish TV station Szczecin TV. The Polish National Geographic magazine was requested – unsuccessfully – to apologise for an article that reported on water and air pollution near a hog farm or face legal action. 

Many individuals and organisations have supported this work.

Tracy has contributed to the greater good – other ten-per-centers please note!