• About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Awards
  • Classifieds
  • Login
  • Login
No Result
View All Result
Membership
Quota Media
Omnibuzz

Food systems news

Tuesday May 24 2022

Great minds think aloud

  • News
    • All
    • In the news
    • Features
    • Opinion
    "At SCOOP we don’t demand exclusivity and actively encourage farmers to find new and better markets for themselves." Pic: Cotswolds farmer by David George

    Paying farmers 75p for each £1 consumers spend on their produce

    A worker handles wheat delivered to a milling facility in Chouf, Lebanon. Pic: Hasan Shaaban/Bloomberg

    Bank of America: Food shocks will destabilise ESG

    "World leaders should see hunger as a global problem urgently requiring a global solution"

    The Economist: The coming food catastrophe

    Pollutants cited by the researchers as increasing obesity include BPA, which is widely added to plastics. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

    Environmental toxins worsen obesity pandemic

    President Joe Biden has called for ideas to help end hunger

    Call for ideas: White House seeks to end hunger in the US by 2030

    "People need time at point of sale to learn to eat in a way that protects the planet"

    Shifting to care – the benefits of being the most inconvenient supermarket

    A pre-school age girl helps her parents pick out veggies in the produce section at the grocery store. She is reaching for a red pepper.

    Exploding the five fat myths of ethical food

    if it seems too cheap, it is too cheap. There’s something wrong somewhere along the way.”

    ‘Why’s chocolate so cheap?’: Aussies call for transparency

    Ukraine could lack seeds for grain crops for years

    Ukraine could lack seeds for grain crops for years

    Grains of wheat pictured at a mill in Beirut, Lebanon, March 1, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

    IMF, World Bank, WFP and WTO urge coordinated action on food security

  • Business
  • Policy
  • Research
  • Sections
    • All
    • Retail
    • Data
    • Society
    • Environment
    • Economy
    • Health
    • Food Safety
    • Governance
    • Security
    • Sustainability
    • Agriculture
    • Rights
    • Tech
    "At SCOOP we don’t demand exclusivity and actively encourage farmers to find new and better markets for themselves." Pic: Cotswolds farmer by David George

    Paying farmers 75p for each £1 consumers spend on their produce

    A worker handles wheat delivered to a milling facility in Chouf, Lebanon. Pic: Hasan Shaaban/Bloomberg

    Bank of America: Food shocks will destabilise ESG

    "World leaders should see hunger as a global problem urgently requiring a global solution"

    The Economist: The coming food catastrophe

    Pollutants cited by the researchers as increasing obesity include BPA, which is widely added to plastics. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

    Environmental toxins worsen obesity pandemic

    President Joe Biden has called for ideas to help end hunger

    Call for ideas: White House seeks to end hunger in the US by 2030

    Signing ceremony of PAGES, in Brazil’s state with the highest poverty and food insecurity rates. Pic: IFAD/Tayna Abreu

    Food security meets Amazon protection in new UN project

    Man holding his chin facing laptop

    Companies urge convergence on climate reporting standards

    The G7 announced no action to protect children from trafficking and forced labour. Children working in Benin. Pic: Degan Gabin

    OECD to help G7 nations achieve sustainable agrifood

    A pre-school age girl helps her parents pick out veggies in the produce section at the grocery store. She is reaching for a red pepper.

    Exploding the five fat myths of ethical food

    Trending Tags

    • Covid-19
    • UK
    • Retail
  • Comms unit
  • Shop
  • Events
  • News
    • All
    • In the news
    • Features
    • Opinion
    "At SCOOP we don’t demand exclusivity and actively encourage farmers to find new and better markets for themselves." Pic: Cotswolds farmer by David George

    Paying farmers 75p for each £1 consumers spend on their produce

    A worker handles wheat delivered to a milling facility in Chouf, Lebanon. Pic: Hasan Shaaban/Bloomberg

    Bank of America: Food shocks will destabilise ESG

    "World leaders should see hunger as a global problem urgently requiring a global solution"

    The Economist: The coming food catastrophe

    Pollutants cited by the researchers as increasing obesity include BPA, which is widely added to plastics. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

    Environmental toxins worsen obesity pandemic

    President Joe Biden has called for ideas to help end hunger

    Call for ideas: White House seeks to end hunger in the US by 2030

    "People need time at point of sale to learn to eat in a way that protects the planet"

    Shifting to care – the benefits of being the most inconvenient supermarket

    A pre-school age girl helps her parents pick out veggies in the produce section at the grocery store. She is reaching for a red pepper.

    Exploding the five fat myths of ethical food

    if it seems too cheap, it is too cheap. There’s something wrong somewhere along the way.”

    ‘Why’s chocolate so cheap?’: Aussies call for transparency

    Ukraine could lack seeds for grain crops for years

    Ukraine could lack seeds for grain crops for years

    Grains of wheat pictured at a mill in Beirut, Lebanon, March 1, 2022. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir

    IMF, World Bank, WFP and WTO urge coordinated action on food security

  • Business
  • Policy
  • Research
  • Sections
    • All
    • Retail
    • Data
    • Society
    • Environment
    • Economy
    • Health
    • Food Safety
    • Governance
    • Security
    • Sustainability
    • Agriculture
    • Rights
    • Tech
    "At SCOOP we don’t demand exclusivity and actively encourage farmers to find new and better markets for themselves." Pic: Cotswolds farmer by David George

    Paying farmers 75p for each £1 consumers spend on their produce

    A worker handles wheat delivered to a milling facility in Chouf, Lebanon. Pic: Hasan Shaaban/Bloomberg

    Bank of America: Food shocks will destabilise ESG

    "World leaders should see hunger as a global problem urgently requiring a global solution"

    The Economist: The coming food catastrophe

    Pollutants cited by the researchers as increasing obesity include BPA, which is widely added to plastics. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/PA

    Environmental toxins worsen obesity pandemic

    President Joe Biden has called for ideas to help end hunger

    Call for ideas: White House seeks to end hunger in the US by 2030

    Signing ceremony of PAGES, in Brazil’s state with the highest poverty and food insecurity rates. Pic: IFAD/Tayna Abreu

    Food security meets Amazon protection in new UN project

    Man holding his chin facing laptop

    Companies urge convergence on climate reporting standards

    The G7 announced no action to protect children from trafficking and forced labour. Children working in Benin. Pic: Degan Gabin

    OECD to help G7 nations achieve sustainable agrifood

    A pre-school age girl helps her parents pick out veggies in the produce section at the grocery store. She is reaching for a red pepper.

    Exploding the five fat myths of ethical food

    Trending Tags

    • Covid-19
    • UK
    • Retail
  • Comms unit
  • Shop
  • Events
No Result
View All Result
Quota Media
No Result
View All Result
Home Topics Sustainability

Exploding the five fat myths of ethical food

OmniAction launches Charter, making ethical food choices possible

by Lise Colyer
April 25, 2022
in Editor's picks, Retail, Data, Features, Environment, Health, Food Safety, Governance, Rights
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
A pre-school age girl helps her parents pick out veggies in the produce section at the grocery store. She is reaching for a red pepper.

"Food companies are allowed to base their claims on data or criteria that they choose – and we are left to try and figure out whether it’s ethical enough for us."

191
SHARES
2.1k
VIEWS
Share on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Facebook

Consumers – in other words all of us who eat – want ethical food but we are confused. The reason is simple – there are no laws around what you can call sustainable or ethical.

Food companies are allowed to base their claims on data or criteria that they choose – and we are left to try and figure out whether it’s ethical enough for us.

  • Read the Charter of Global Food Impacts

Perhaps an item’s carbon footprint has been measured to tell you this is sustainable. But how much of the footprint are they really calculating? It’s up to them. Most don’t measure the carbon footprint of transport or storage, for example – and that can be up to 90% of an item’s carbon emissions.

If an Easter egg was made with zero deforestation, what about child labour? There’s no label that will tell you. How about the pesticides that were used to produce that cocoa – are they banned as unsafe in Europe and the UK?

Or the sugar – was it produced on stolen land?

OmniAction’s community of experts from all around the world have come up with the solution and we’ve just published it. It’s the Charter of Global Food Impacts.

Here are five fat myths of ethical food that we managed to explode along the way

1/ Consumers don’t care about ethical labels

More than 400 labels in Europe alone, with more appearing every day, tells us food companies know very well that consumers care. From discounters like Lidl and Aldi all way through to high-end chains, sustainability claims are being made from one end of the shop to the other. Food retailers receive emails and tweets every day from customers asking about sustainability.

Even if we sometimes buy food we’re not sure is healthy for us, it’s unthinkable we’d be glad that a product was produced by slaves, and child slaves in particular, or that someone’s land was stolen to grow that food.

2/ The food companies don’t care and want to keep greenwashing

Not so. There is lots of regulation coming along which means big companies need to report on their climate impact, can only make reasonable claims about sustainability, and have to take responsibility for the ethics of their whole supply chain.

Every company is under pressure to present their ethical credentials, known as ESG (environmental, social and governance). Banks and investors view ethical companies as less risky and prefer to lend to them.

3/ Measuring carbon equals sustainability reporting

Net Zero refers to all man-made greenhouse gas emissions. More than carbon needs to be measured, although half the food system’s greenhouse gas emissions are carbon dioxide, mainly from land use change and energy.

One third of the food system’s greenhouse gases are methane, from livestock, rice production and waste management, largely. Most of the rest is emitted as nitrous oxide from nitrogen fertilisers.

Man-made fluorinated gases, used in refrigeration, are increasing. Emissions from the retail sector are three times higher than in 1990.

Biodiversity loss, land use, water scarcity, and soil degradation all need to be measured too.

We also need to know what we are putting in our bodies, whether it is safe to eat and how nutritious it is.

And we need to make sure that the people producing our food can afford to eat themselves. We need to know that their land rights and labour rights have been respected.

4/ Collecting the data is difficult

Nope. At the moment, we don’t have a framework that tells us what to ask of the data. That’s what OmniAction’s charter solves. Now, it’s possible to literally compare apples with apples – and this hasn’t been done properly before.

The databases and the software are all available to capture the right data and turn it into a label that is easy for consumers to understand at a glance.

5/ Getting this right will take a long time

Definitely no. We are in a hurry. The latest IPCC report on climate change mentioned food 350 times – as fellow inhabitants of Planet Earth, we all need food to be fixed and fast.

OmniAction’s community includes lots of young data scientists and specialists who say we have to start with what we have. There’s no time to waste. As the data improves, we’ll start using it. OmniAction’s framework will be constantly updated as the hive mind comes across new solutions.

But we need to start applying the framework. The data, the software, consumer will, and global agreement are all in place – there is no reason to delay.

How can we be so sure? OmniAction’s community includes hundreds of specialists from every corner of the system and all over the world. Every week they uncover fresh solutions to make the food system better.

  • Take a look at the Charter of Global Food Impacts to see what we mean.
  • Join the community by signing up here.
Sign up for Best of Quota
  Thank you for Signing Up
Please correct the marked field(s) below.
1,true,6,Contact Email,2 1,false,1,First Name,2 1,false,1,Last Name,2
Tags: Food companiesHuman rightsOmniActionEthical foodFood labelsUnited NationsCharterHive mindFramework
Previous Post

‘Why’s chocolate so cheap?’: Aussies call for transparency

Next Post

Shifting to care – the benefits of being the most inconvenient supermarket

Lise Colyer

Lise Colyer

Lise Colyer is a founding editor of Quota. She seeks to improve food systems by communicating effectively across the business, policy and research sectors. Contact LiseColyer@quota.media.

Next Post
"People need time at point of sale to learn to eat in a way that protects the planet"

Shifting to care - the benefits of being the most inconvenient supermarket

Please login to join discussion

Editor's Picks

"At SCOOP we don’t demand exclusivity and actively encourage farmers to find new and better markets for themselves." Pic: Cotswolds farmer by David George
Retail

Paying farmers 75p for each £1 consumers spend on their produce

by India Hamilton
May 23, 2022
0
1.9k

I aim to introduce you to a new way of looking at business, in which the entrepreneur is a development...

Read more
Signing ceremony of PAGES, in Brazil’s state with the highest poverty and food insecurity rates. Pic: IFAD/Tayna Abreu

Food security meets Amazon protection in new UN project

May 20, 2022
1.7k
Man holding his chin facing laptop

Companies urge convergence on climate reporting standards

May 20, 2022
1.6k
"People need time at point of sale to learn to eat in a way that protects the planet"

Shifting to care – the benefits of being the most inconvenient supermarket

May 2, 2022
1.3k
A pre-school age girl helps her parents pick out veggies in the produce section at the grocery store. She is reaching for a red pepper.

Exploding the five fat myths of ethical food

April 25, 2022
2.1k
Twitter Youtube LinkedIn
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Awards
  • Contact
  • Shop
  • Classifieds
  • Events
  • Login

Popular Tags

Covid-19 United States United Kingdom Brexit United Nations 2021 Food Systems Summit European Union China Food and Agriculture Organization Food banks Meat World Food Programme COP26 UK Nestle Climate Change Food waste Farmers

Best of Quota

Our audience's free secret weapon, leaving others to ask, "What do they know, that I don't?"


Thank you for Signing Up
Please correct the marked field(s) below.
1,true,6,Contact Email,21,false,1,First Name,21,false,1,Last Name,2

© 2021 Quota Media Limited | All rights reserved | Registered Company Number 12581018      Online Web Fonts

Terms & Conditions      Privacy Policy      Ethical Policy      Cookie Policy     

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Business
  • Policy
  • Research
  • Comms unit
  • Shop
  • Events
  • Membership subs
  • Awards
  • Contact
  • About

© 2021 Quota Media Limited | All rights reserved | Registered Company Number 12581018      Online Web Fonts

Terms & Conditions      Privacy Policy      Ethical Policy      Cookie Policy     

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In