It is COP29 and Tuesday marked food, agriculture and water day, so “[…] perhaps it’s appropriate that the biggest deliberations feature a game of chicken”, wrote Bloomberg Green. This is of course the standoff about the expiring $100 billion annual climate finance commitment. The latest draft agreements released on Thursday (as we compiled the Digest) failed to include a figure for a new global finance goal, noted the FT, “leaving an ‘X’ in the document”. Wealthy and poorer nations reportedly argued over basics such as a total sum, how it should be structured and who should pay. (For the record that $100 billion is now seen as a bit of “joke” figure from those in developing nations).
These talks are as ever full of hot air and hyperbole, but this comment from Avinash Persaud, special advisor on climate change at the Inter-American Development Bank and a COP veteran was telling: “This year’s COP has the hallmarks of Copenhagen.”That, for the uninitiated, is not a good thing.
Also feeling gloomy currently are farmers. The smallholders who produce up to 80% of food in places like Africa and Asia need a big chunk of the funding to both mitigate emissions and damage to biodiversity and also to adapt to a changing climate which, regular readers will be aware, is proving a bit of a problem.
UK farmers are also miffed about money, with thousands protesting in London this week against the inheritance tax changes. NFU president Tom Bradshaw gave an impassioned speech, reported the BBC, in which he criticised the government but moreso the system within which farmers are struggling to survive. “We’d love to pay more tax,” Bradshaw said. “If we get proper margins from food production, and we end up swelling the Treasury coffers, bring it on. But at the moment the supply chain doesn’t give us those returns that enables us to save the money to pay the inheritance tax that this government now wants to take.”
From smallholders we move to big food, but go back to chickens. KFC is ruffling feathers following a story on the Poultry Network website. This was a ‘what we learned’ style piece following the EPIC (not a cycle race but the Egg and poultry industry conference) and one of things we (reportedly) learned is that “KFC will not meet the Better Chicken Commitment requirements by 2026”. The site quotes KFC UK and Ireland head of sustainability Ruth Edge: “We’re not saying we’re never going to. But we’re saying for 2026 and the way the market has developed, or lack of, we’re not going to be able to do it.”
This got the Humane League in a spin. A statement was shot out, slamming KFC and detailing how the BCC is an animal welfare policy targeting “the worst forms of suffering in chicken farming, including swapping fast-growing ‘Frankenchickens’ to healthier, slower-growing birds”. Research has shown these breeds have fewer injuries and are less prone to disease – they even have more fun. A few more days alive, though, potentially means more feed, more energy, more emissions – and more costs.
KFC has gained quite a bit of nice PR on the back of its commitment. “Chicken is our business and we have a responsibility as the chicken brand, to make sure we’re pushing improvement to chicken welfare standards across our supply chain,” said Paula MacKenzie, general manager of KFC UK and Ireland at the time of the commitment being signed in 2019 (the first fast food chain to do so).
Five years on and (like others) the Colonel has found leading the charge is more difficult than expected. KFC has admitted before that the race to slower growing breeds is, well, a slow one. In 2020, 1.72% of KFC’s chickens were from such higher welfare breeds; by 2021 it had managed 2.16% and in 2022 3.06%. Once the right breeds have been selected it will take “more than three to four years” to switch over in each market, the company noted in its 2020 chicken welfare report.
In an update this week, Rudi Van Schoor, chief corporate supply chain officer at KFC Pan-Europe, said: “We were very clear that we could only meet all of the asks in the Commitment if the wider poultry sector moved, as we make up less than 3% of the total UK chicken market.”
Less than 3% of UK chicken production is produced to BCC standards that is available to KFC’s specifications. “The reality is, at the moment, the UK poultry industry is not yet in an operational or commercial position to deliver the Better Chicken Commitment by 2026,” Van Schoor added, “but we remain committed to the Better Chicken Commitment framework.”
More than 380 businesses in the UK and EU have committed to the BCC so far, including Greggs, Waitrose, Nando’s, Burger King, Subway and M&S. McDonald’s has gone for its own set of commitments, much to the chagrin of Compassion in World Farming.
Our other stories this week include: research showing positive results from planning rules that restrict the number of new fast-food outlets; progress on pesticides across some of the major UK supermarket chains but criticism of Iceland and Aldi in particular; and the UK Government’s new ‘principles for voluntary carbon and nature market integrity’.
On Monday, look out for the latest Plastics Package, which includes some juicy fodder from the Foodservice Packaging Association’s environment seminar earlier this month. Then on Wednesday you can read about the role of farmers in the cultured meat revolution. Until next Friday, keep your glasses half full, please.
