Press release: 4 Jan 2024

Agroecological food and farming organisations welcome the Environment Secretary’s pledge to tackle unfair labelling and improve transparency

CLEAR, a consortium representing over 50 farming and food civil societies and businesses, including the Food, Farming & Countryside Commission, Sustainable Food Trust, and The Real Farming Trust, welcomes the announcement by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Rt. Hon. Steve Barclay MP, on the Government’s pledges to improve food system transparency at the Oxford Real Farming Conference today.

The announcement has especially highlighted the urgency to understand and address practices that cause unfairness, to protect farmers as well as consumers. Lack of transparency and accountability in the food supply chain disempowers consumers and businesses in making informed sustainable choices. This could threaten the UK’s food security and our national environmental and social goals in the long run.

This is an affirmative response to CLEAR’s call to the Government in the past year to urgently address the adverse business, environmental, and social outcomes from the lack of transparency and accountability in voluntary food labelling practices whilst campaigning for method-of-production information to be made mandatory information on food labels in the UK and for farm-led data to underpin all food environmental and social impact labels.

All food, whether domestically produced or imported, needs to have clear method of production labelling to cover animal welfare, environmental and social implications.

Fidelity Weston, Chair of CLEAR says:

“This announcement beckons for positive milestones in the UK’s food security and food system transition to a more sustainable and regenerative future. The Government needs to ensure that primary method-of-production data, from pre-farm to on-farm to processing and manufacturing, that shows the reality of UK food production, underpins all environmental and social food labelling. This is key to unlocking transparency and accountability in our food system. This is recognised as the missing link to helping households and businesses to make informed decisions and to reward producers for continuing and improving farming and processing standards.”

“We look forward to working with the Government to ensure that the voice of agroecology is represented in the government’s upcoming consultation. Our participation is crucial to ensure that the experience and expertise of producers are properly considered, especially those working hard to apply ecological principles and the highest animal welfare and labour standards to feed the nation with tasty and nutritious food.”

Catherine Chong, ESG Advisor and Engagement Lead of CLEAR says:

“The implications are beyond food labelling. The current industry practice of using poor quality proxy data has been distorting market analyses on farming, especially when we look at the environmental, social, and governance footprinting on the farming sector. This causes disinformation and misinformation not least to consumers and businesses, but also at investor level - affecting asset valuation and investment risks. Greenwashing of poor farming standards and brownwashing of good farming standard will thwart our food-climate actions.”

“Measures to improve transparency in food labelling must be designed with a holistic environmental, social, and governance mindset and clear (ESG) goals. The costs of labelling will be justified to taxpayers and businesses if it fundamentally rewards good practices and disincentivises sub-standards. Food labels can be a tool to support agricultural transition and to meet the nation’s and global human and planetary health goals.”

Sue Pritchard, Chief Exec at Food, Farming & Countryside Commission says:

“Citizens in the National Conversation about Food told us they want ‘urgent action that prioritises health and wellbeing over profit, through government policies which shift where power is in the food system to make it fairer for farmers and others across society. Our polling data shows that 88% of Britons want a fairer food system for farmers, and improving food system transparency is an important first step towards that.”

Adele Jones, Executive Director at Sustainable Food Trust, says:

“It is very good news to see this issue back on the agenda for government, particularly as so many companies are now starting to think about eco-labelling, which could be dangerously confusing for everyone unless there are clear guidelines set. It is critical that any future labels are underpinned by transparent, common and robust metrics such as the Global Farm Metric framework. This way we can ensure that farmers are rewarded appropriately for delivering measurable benefits to people and planet and citizens are empowered to support the type of farming systems they would like to see. ”

About:

The Consortium for Labelling for the Environment, Animal Welfare and Regenerative Farming (CLEAR) has over 50 organisation members representing the views of agro-ecological farmers, small and medium food producers and civil society organisations on policy and regulatory development on food labelling in the UK.

For more information, visit our website at clearfoodlabeluk.org

Media contact:

Catherine Chong

ir@linkesg.com

07940128088