The shopping club: members of a consumer co-op discover that their buying power can ensure ethical, affordable and healthy choices.

It all started with milk. In 1965, at a time when Japan's "so-called economic miracle" had prices for staples spiraling ever upward, a Tokyo woman organized 200 of her neighbours to buy 300 bottles of milk together, reducing the price. That first purchase led to the founding of the Seikatsu Club Consumers' Cooperative.

Today some 230,000 households participate in the club and it has become a major educational and political force in Japan, using its buying power to influence a wide variety of issues. Members of the club's board of directors were in Victoria recently to host a forum on "Food Security and the Conscious Consumer" and to visit a number of local …