Sustainable food

Written evidence submitted by Food and Drink Federation

Summary

· FDF supports the conclusions of the Government’s Foresight project that we need to produce more, from less and with less impact in order to meet the twin challenges of future food security and climate change;

· We believe that much can be achieved with existing knowledge and technologies, notably by reducing waste and driving efficiency of resource use and best practice throughout the supply chain – and by helping consumers themselves to make more sustainable choices. FDF’s Five-fold Environmental Ambition sets out how the UK food and drink sector is already contributing to this agenda;

· But more needs to be done to make sustainable food production a key strategic priority in its own right, with an integrated and joined-up approach to policy making on all relevant issues here in the UK, in the EU and in the wider international community;

· In addition to improving the research and evidence base for understanding and assessing impacts and their inter-actions at ecosystem levels, this needs to include: a whole food chain approach to sustainable sourcing and the promotion of best practice; more coherence in relation to energy and emissions policies and key areas of infrastructure; investment in innovation and the development of new knowledge and skills, and ensuring a genuine level playing field in terms of competition and regulation to ensure that external and compliance costs are reflected in ways which support comparative advantage and avoid distorting markets.

Introduction

1. FDF is the voice of the UK’s food and drink industry, the country’s largest manufacturing sector. The sector contributes 15% of manufacturing output, with a turnover of around £73 billion a year, gross added value of about £22 billion and an export performance which now exceeds £10 billion (excluding alcoholic drinks). We also directly employ around 440,000 people in the UK and are part of a wider food system employing around 3 million.

2. Our role is to supply consumers with safe, nutritious, appetising and affordable food and to help them make sustainable choices which will secure these benefits for the future.

3. Through our Five-fold Environmental Ambition [1] , launched in 2007, we have made measured and verifiable progress in improving resource efficiency in the key areas of CO2, water, food and packaging waste and transport. Based on data from our sectoral Climate Change Agreement, members have made a 21% reduction in emissions by 2009, compared to a 1990 baseline, passing our 20% target for 2010 a year early. We have also halved food waste to landfill, on track for achieving our target of zero by 2015. There has been similarly successful progress in saving water and against our other targets. Following a substantive review last year, we decided to make our existing targets even more challenging – including a commitment to reduce CO2 emissions by 35% by 2020 (compared to a 1990 baseline), ahead of any other sector and the Government’s own interim carbon budget. But, because the manufacturing sector is only responsible for a small share of total impacts, we have also set ourselves new aims seeking to influence performance and behaviour elsewhere in the value chain. This includes working with our suppliers, customers, employees, policy makers and other stakeholders to develop the necessary information, skills and business environment to deliver continuous improvement in the use of energy, water and other natural resources and help address wider issues of climate change and loss of biodiversity. We also aim to encourage the development of life-cycle thinking throughout the supply chain to help identify the most cost effective areas for further action.

4. Through our work on product reformulation, food science and safety, nutrition and labelling, we are also seeking to make a real difference to health and well-being and a better understanding of the complex relationship between diet and sustainability.

5. We believe that a competitive and sustainable UK food manufacturing sector has a key role to play in economic recovery and green growth, as well as helping to ensure future food security, not least as the major customer for a more productive UK agriculture, exploiting the comparative advantage we are likely to enjoy for many temperate crops as a result of climate change and the increasing inability of some existing producers elsewhere to adapt to more demanding growing conditions.

6. The FDF Seafood Group is also playing a leading role in promoting radical reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries, notably through a Europe-wide industry alliance with WWF, bringing retailers and processors together in support of more sustainable conservation and management of this vital renewable food source.

7. In all these areas we work closely with Government and other interested parties and seek to contribute to wider public debate.

Our view of the key challenges

8. We have participated fully in the development of current UK policy on sustainable food, from its origins in the Food Industry Sustainability Strategy (FISS) [2] , through the Cabinet Office "Food Matters" [3] report of 2008, to the more recent Defra work on Food 2030 [4] . We believe that the recent Foresight [5] report provides an authoritative and compelling account of the underlying drivers and challenges for the future and the high-level areas where action is needed at both national and international level. But more needs to be done to achieve greater coherence in policy making, particularly in relation to energy and emissions policies and key areas of infrastructure, such as waste, water and transport. There are also clear risks of market failure in respect of the innovation, new technologies and skills which will be needed to meet the longer term challenges – and in relation to the research and evidence base needed to support improved life-cycle analysis and better understanding of the trade-offs and unintended consequences, particularly in terms of wider eco-systems. Addressing these will require both public investment and a clear strategic framework to provide the consistency and longer term stability required for businesses themselves to plan and invest. UK manufacturers also need a level playing field in international markets in order to remain competitive and profitable.

Responses to the specific themes identified by the Committee

How can the environmental and climate change impacts of the food we choose to eat best be reduced?

9. For most foods, the biggest impacts occur either on the farm (method of production, use of fossil fuel based inputs and water) or in the home (how food is stored, prepared, cooked and waste disposed of). Key to addressing this is a better understanding of how and where such impacts arise, and their relative importance, through improved life-cycle analysis. This also needs to take account of wider issues such as biodiversity and – particularly for water – qualitative as well as quantitative impacts. There may also be significant geographical and seasonal variations for the same product, as well as indirect impacts through land use change. These make it very difficult to derive standard or aggregate values of the sort which would be necessary to underpin a labelling system, as recent Defra research [6] has concluded. This suggests that a consumer-driven model of behaviour change in the supply chain is unlikely to be effective and could give rise to significant unintended consequences. The onus should instead be on producers and processors to minimise adverse impacts across the value chain, combined with better information for consumers on how to store and cook products and improved waste disposal and recycling systems to maximise resource efficiency. Cutting waste remains a major challenge, especially before food enters the supply chain and from the point of retail sale.

What are the land use trade-offs?

10. This is a very complex issue. Apart from food production, land plays an essential role in greenhouse gas management (particularly storage of CO2, NO2 and CH4) and in water collection and filtration. The potential for land to support different activities also changes over time as a result of changes in technology and climate, as well as the use of irrigation and fertilisation. In an ideal world, natural resource accounting systems would provide some indication of relative costs and benefits to enable better choices to be made. But, at present, the costs of many of the externalities of land use are simply not reflected in the price of the resulting goods or services, even within individual countries, let alone across international supply chains. As the Foresight report makes clear, all natural resources need to be used in the most productive way. But there is no single prescription for this. Resource efficiency and comparative advantage are the key guiding principles.

How can Government help to deliver healthy food sustainably?

11. As explained above, the sustainability of a particular food is a complex issue depending on where and how it is produced, stored, transported, processed and consumed. These variables are largely independent of the dietary characteristics of the food itself. Vegetables grown in heated greenhouses would commonly be regarded as "healthy", but this does not automatically mean they are sustainable. Certain foods can be produced in very sustainable agricultural systems, but this does not necessarily make them "healthier" than equivalents produced under different conditions. While it is possible to construct models of sustainable diets, for example the WWF Livewell [7] recommendations which build on the FSA Eatwell plate [8] these are inevitably restrictive and prescriptive in terms of consumer choice – and also impose constraints on manufacturers and retailers in terms of potential sourcing. Gaining consumer acceptance for such changes on the scales needed to make material impacts would require not only a very clear – and easily understood – evidence base, but also major investment in consumer education and collaborative action across the supply chain. This could also have implications for competition law and potentially also for international trade if any regulatory underpinning were to be construed as a non-tariff barrier or interference with EU Single Market rules. These issues apply also to public procurement through Government Buying Standards. FDF’s preferred approach is for industry to continue its efforts to make its products as healthy and sustainable as possible within their own categories and to offer consumers a wide range of safe, nutritious and affordable foods from which to make their own choices to suit their own requirements and lifestyles.

How can consumers be helped to make sustainable choices?

12. This is closely linked to the previous question. Improved consumer information and education are clearly very important, but this presupposes a sufficiently strong evidence base for messages to be conveyed in ways which promote positive behavioural change and avoid unintended consequences, such as undesirable changes in diet. It again raises the question of choice editing and the link between sustainable diets and healthy eating.

What aspects of production and supply present the biggest problems?

13. In resource terms, greenhouse gas emissions and water use in primary agriculture – and energy and water use in the home – are by far the largest areas of impact. Foresight found that domestic impacts alone were larger than manufacturing and retail combined. But waste – whether water, energy or food itself – remains the largest single issue across the whole supply chain. In the present food system, manufacturers (and retailers) probably have the most direct incentives to minimise waste as all their inputs are quantifiable in financial terms. Although farmers and consumers also incur monetary costs from waste, these are often much less transparent and in some circumstances either ignored or accepted as part of wider overheads. Some of the externalities of food production and consumption, such as biodiversity impacts (and water use outside the UK) may not bear any obvious monetary cost at all. Again Foresight suggests that these are issues which need to be addressed internationally at broader food system governance level.

Role of local authorities and localism?

14. The need for joined-up, coherent and consistent policies, repositioning food production in Government are key findings of the Foresight report. There is also emphasis on the need to improve infrastructure. Different approaches by different local authorities to many of these issues could result in disjointed and ineffective actions, as well as creating market and competitive distortions. A clear current example of this is provision for recycling, with different authorities collecting different materials in different ways. This makes it very difficult to provide on-pack advice to consumers on what can be recycled where, or for industry to agree on new pack designs or technologies. Planning consent for changes to production sites, such as the installation of anaerobic digestion plants or more rational use of entrance or exit roads is another area of common concern. The concept of localism could accentuate some of these difficulties, as well as reinforcing certain popular misunderstandings in relation to sustainability, for example that small scale or extensive systems are inherently superior, or that food miles are significant indicator of environmental impact. What matters in all these examples are the actual resources used compared to other systems, which can only be established through proper life-cycle analysis. Fruit or vegetables from Africa or Asia can have lower carbon footprints than their locally grown UK equivalents depending on a whole range of factors relating to production systems, scale of operation and transport methods. The same may be true of water and biodiversity impacts, though this again needs to be established on the basis of sound evidence.

Government procurement policies

15. This is clearly scope for Government to lead by example in its own behaviour and procurement policies, provided these are fully evidence-based and respect the rules and principles of fair competition at national, EU and international level. The problems of defining sustainable or healthy food are the same for Government as for the food chain itself – and subject to the same considerations in respect of potential trade-offs and unintended consequences.

Conclusion

16. Sustainable food production is central to future food (and water) security and to helping mitigate climate change. It is arguably one of the biggest challenges facing the world – and needs to be addressed on a global scale. Improved resource efficiency and the principle of comparative advantage are both vital to living within the natural limits of the planet and its ecosystems. The UK food industry is leading by example by addressing its own environmental impacts and reformulating its products. But change has to happen across the whole value chain and in consumer behaviour. This needs to be done within a clear strategic framework which puts sustainability at the heart of joined-up Government policy making. Sustainability is also the key to green growth and future prosperity. We believe that UK food and farming have the potential to make a major contribution, given the right operating environment and support for the innovation, skills and research base which will be needed.

28 March 2011