This week we have gone all bite-size with our round-up, such is the quantity of news flooding our system. There is good news. There is bad news. Can we, like the Eatwell plate, get the balance right?
Let’s get fresh. More than 10% of the average consumer’s January grocery bill was spent on fresh fruit, vegetables and salad, totalling £1.2bn – £193m more than in December, according to Kantar. Over a quarter of take-home food and drink in January is chosen with health “at least partially in mind” said the market data experts, as “shoppers tell us they want to eat less processed food and feel the benefit of fibre and vitamins”.
Healthy diets can also be sustainable. This was a message that few would have gone home without after last week’s Sustainable Food Conference, in London. Danone president for UK&I James Mayer called for a “new mission” – that is, “healthy food at scale” – before highlighting the role of processing in our food system: it allows us to scale, to make products affordable, and to fortify products, he argued.
The regeneration game goes on. At Danone, 40% of key dairy ingredients are now ‘regenerative’, Mayer said. Also hyping up its activity in this space is Wahaca: the Mexican food chain has just brought regenerative beef to its menus. In 2023, steak was removed from the options as Wahaca shifted further to a plants-first policy. Changing how the company sources and serves beef is now expected to reduce total company emissions by 9%. “We have sourced ‘better beef’ with lower carbon emissions,” Carolyn Lum, the chain’s sustainability lead, told us. “But we’ve also reduced the number of dishes and keep pushing plant-based menu options.”
Can politicians push on with plant-based? There was good news for the alt-protein party this week, as a new analysis by the Good Food Institute showed the government has dished out £75m to support the products. That is more than half the sum recommended by Henry Dimbleby in his national food strategy (£125m). The GFI is now calling for “modernising” of the regulatory landscape to grease the wheels, so to speak. Ministers working on the new national food strategy should take note, the Institute added.
Speaking of food policy. The environment secretary Steve Reed has announced a new land use framework. This will, he said, help deliver the different objectives we have for England’s finite land, including growing food, building 1.5 million homes this parliament, and restoring nature. Around 70% of England’s land is used for farming; the BBC reports that the plan is to convert some of that (9%) into forest and wild habitats by 2050 (to help achieve net-zero targets) and improve efficiency on the remaining land. A consultationis now underway.
Industrial meat and megafarms. Whether such efficiency means more industrial approaches is moot. Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has got campaigners hot under the collar after she backed expansion at Heathrow airport and (channelling her inner Boris Johnson, it seems) vowed newts and bats wouldn’t get in the way of delivering big infrastructure projects. But companies can’t be trusted within the current system, warned Sustain and Feedback Global this week as they published new data showing that industrial-scale livestock farms across East Anglia breached environmental rules “hundreds of times in recent years”.
The fishy business of farming. The regulation of salmon farming Scotland is also under scrutiny (again) as activists and MSPs put pressure on the sector to clean up operations before further expanding. Campaigners have also just lost their appeal against a decision by Defra to allow salmon producers to drop the word ‘farmed’ from the front of packs. Packs containing the fish now read ‘Scottish Salmon’ rather ‘Scottish Farmed Salmon’; this despite evidence showing very limited numbers of consumers know that all salmon from Scotland is farmed, most of it at industrial scale (watch out for more on that story later this month).
Gone horse after so many warnings. Meat is also worrying the Dover Port Health Authority. Illegal meat, which has not been through the proper health checks, is now available on “most high streets” in the UK, an official warned in an evidence session with the Efra committee this week. The BBC reported in October that the amount of illegal meat seized by Border Force officials alone doubled from almost 35,000kg in 2022/23 to more than 70,000kg in 2023/24. “Defra have continually stated that there are robust controls in place. There are not. They don’t exist,” Lucy Manzano, head of the Dover Port Health Authority, told the MPs. Defra had also failed to provide “any confirmation of how food would be controlled at the point it arrives, or more importantly, between the point it arrives and the inspection facility that is accessed 22 miles across”, she added.
Avian flu and supply fluctuations. European outbreaks of animal diseases are certainly causing concern among officials and farmers alike. The hospitality sector faces challenges too, not least due to the ongoing avian influenza (bird flu) outbreak affecting poultry and, more recently, dairy herds. This could have a knock-on impact to beef supply as well, warned Prestige Purchasing this week: “Businesses should prepare for potential price fluctuations and supply chain issues. Flexible menu planning, careful cost control, and close communication with suppliers will be important for navigating this period.”
And in other stories. We look at the mission to create low-methane rice, and how ‘dry January’ no-alcohol drinks are not just for post-Christmas. We also look in more detail at the GFI analysis.
