Responsible practice in the food industry
4.30-6pm, Tuesday 15 December 2009
Jubilee Room, House of Commons
Minutes
Introduction
Lord Rea welcomed members of the Associate Parliamentary Corporate Responsibility Group and the Associate Parliamentary Food and Health Forum to this joint meeting to discuss responsible practice in the food industry.
Lord Rea noted that the food industry attracts considerable criticism against a background of increasing concern about obesity and diet-related diseases, food miles, packaging, food waste and the treatment of suppliers and customers. Many in the food industry would argue, however, that the food industry is more responsible now than ever: for example, providing more and better information about the food we eat and advice about healthy eating as well as acting to address issues such as climate change. He said this panel-led discussion would provide an opportunity to hear the views of representatives of different sectors of the food industry and an independent charity – the Food Commission. He then introduced the four members of the Panel:Vanessa Hattersley, the Company Nutritionist of Asda Stores Ltd; Allan Edwards, the Director of Corporate Affairs and Corporate Responsibility for the Compass Group UK & Ireland; Carole Stewart, the Technical Director of Northern Foods;andJessica Mitchell the Director of the Food Commission and Editor of the Food Magazine; an interesting and well written quarterly magazine.
Vanessa Hattersley, Asda Stores Ltd
As the Company Nutritionist for Asda Stores Ltd, Vanessa is responsible for the nutritional content and nutritional labelling of all the foods in their portfolio. Asda is the second biggest retailer in the UKand has 160,000 employees. Vanessa said she would focus on their school education programme, their product reformulation and development and their nutritional labelling.
Asda is frequently approached by schools and teachers asking for resources to help educate children about food. It has developed a range of web-based resources, available at which are targeted at children in Key Stages 1-3. They adhere to the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA’s) competencies which are focus on food safety,diet and health, food science and the journey from farm to fork. All the games and resources are checked for accuracy by the FSA and an independent educational consultancy, all of them are free of charge and no products are advertised through the site. Sustain produced a report, Through the Back Door, which looked at the educational resources produced by some 18 companies, and Asda was the only company cited as an example of best practice, whose materials were accurate and not used for marketing purposes. This issue is topical because the DCSF has just published an independentreport, The Impact of the Commercial World on Children’s Wellbeing.
Asda has a cross-cutting approach to product reformulation and development which covers all their products: all their ranges have to conform to the same standards and they have set targets for the amounts of calories, salt, sugar, fat and saturated fat. Asda removed all artificial colours and flavours from their products by the end of 2007 and they were the first major supermarket to do so. This includesthe colours recommended for removal after the FSA announcement on the findings of the Southampton Study. Asda is now looking at removing artificial colours from medicines sold in its stores. Asda met the FSA’s original salt reduction targets in 2007 and in total has removed some 500 tonnes of salt from its products over the last couple of years. Along with other retailer members of the British Retail Consortium, it removed industrially produced transfats from its products by the end of 2007. Asda’s weight management range of Good for You products has been reformulated so that they are not only low in fat but they contain at least 30% less calories than the standard alternative. Asda has introduced a policy on standard portion sizes which ensures responsible sizes are communicated clearly to customers.
The majority of Asda’s corporate policies are underpinned by customer research and research on nutrition labelling was used to establish their customers’ preferences and what they find easy to understand. They found that their customers prefer messages such has “high in” and “low in”, traffic light colours and the Guideline Daily Amount (GDA) labelling. Customers also prefer a horizontal rather than vertical format, perhaps because they are used to reading from left to right. These conclusions mirror the findings of the independent research commissioned by the FSA to assess nutrition labelling and hence Asda continues to follow this integrated approach.
Vanessa cited two particular challenges she believes the food industry will come to face in the years ahead: the need to join up the health and sustainability agendas; and the need to address the balance of marketing and promotions. She said the latter was hard to discuss in an open forum because of competition law. Vanessa suggested that the food industry will face two major challenges over the years ahead: the need to join up the health and sustainability agendas; and joint responsibility for public health messages. The need to join up the sustainability and health agendas was identified by the Government in its Food Matters report and was recently reiterated by Defra’s Council of Food Advisers. Vanessa believes we have not yet reached the right balance in terms of a division of responsibility for improving public health. Voluntary action by responsible food companies does not necessarily create a level playing field, but strong leadership from individual companies has helped to build momentum in some areas and this will have a positive effect. For example, Asda is part of the Wal-Mart Group and Wal-Mart is taking forwardAsda’s work on food and health in America. As the world’s biggest food retailer, this could have a major impact.
Allan Edwards, Compass Group UKIreland
Compass is one of the largest food service companies in the world, with 52,000 employees in the UK and Ireland, providing services for clients on 7000 sites, including schools, hospitals, prisons, companies and even some oil rigs.Compass provides 1m meals a day and has a £2 billion turnover. Allan said his comments applied to the food service sector generally.
Allan said it was difficult to select a few subjects for this wide ranging discussion, but he would focus on the five areas that correspond to Compass’s corporate framework: its people, sustainable sourcing, wellness and nutrition, the environment and community. Compass seeks to educate and train its staff in all these areas.
Each Compass employee has an opportunity to gain a qualification, through e-learning modules on nutrition and environment management.
Compass has precisely defined the concepts “truly British” and “truly local” and it hopes this will encourage the food industry to support local producers as much as possible. The company use 39million Lion Quality British eggs, 20,000,000 litres of British milk and 2000 tonnes of British beef each year. Compass also seeks to encourage ethical trading. It is the largest supplier of Fairtrade products, selling all 11.5m fair-trade bananas and serving 61m cups of Rainforest Alliance tea a year.
In order to help consumers make informed and healthier choices and, Compass offers chefs over 300 recipes from its healthy, “Balanced Choices” range. Its “CoreConceptRange” products carry full nutritional information at the point of consumer choice, including the GDA information. Compass is also working closely with the FSA on providing calorie information for its customers at the point of choice.
Carbon footprint is one of the major environmental issues which Compass is tackling. It is trying to reduce its carbon footprint and to date has focussed primarily on food miles. A new project in Ireland (north and south) has enabled it to cut 2million kilometres of food miles and it is now turning its attention to the UK. It has set itself a tough target to eliminate 6million food miles on the UK mainland by the end of 2010.
Food waste is another major issue which Compass is addressing. It is providing tools for chefs to develop their awareness of this issue, so that food is effectively managed and waste is reduced, so less goes to landfill. Compass has introduced Trim Tax,a holistic approach to waste management and it is encouraging Defra to increase funding for anaerobic digestion and composting. Compass is working to achieve ISO14001across all its outlets by the end of 2010.
Compass has supported a JuniorChefsAcademy, as part of its community programme, for the last eight years because it believes that helping children to develop an interest in food, and knowledge about it, will be good for the children and for their parents. Some 3000 children have now taken their 43 ten week courses on food, nutrition and lifeskills, and the feedback from the children and their parents is very encouraging. Compass also supports Cancer Research UK as part of its community programme, hitting its target of raising £250,000 for it in 2009. This charity is a natural partner for Compass because a healthier lifestyle can reduce the risk of cancer.
Carole Stewart, Northern Foods plc
As Group Technical Director, Carole is responsible for the safety and quality of the entire range of foods sold by Northern Foods, including their retailer label products and the food they produce for their own brands, such as Fox’s Biscuits, Goodfella’s Pizzas and Matthew Walker Christmas Puddings. Most of the time, whilst it will be Northern Foods in the pack, the name on the pack is some other retailer brand, whether it be a salad, sandwich or any other product in their food category. However, assuring the safety and quality of this food is just one part of the range of activities that now constitutes responsible practice in the food industry.
Northern Foods has long been associated with responsible practice, from its earliest days in supplying clean, pasteurised milk to an increasingly urban population; through its partnership in the 1970s with a customer which pioneered the development of a chilled recipe dish as increasing numbers of women worked; to the present when it enjoys a well earned reputation for quality, service delivery and, above all, great tasting food achieved by, “the Northern Way”. “The Northern Way” is about making great food in a responsible way and lies at the heart of its business. This approach is founded on four pillars: the workplace, marketplace, environment and community.
On workplace: to compete in an increasingly shrinking world, Northern Foods need a skilled, trained workforce. They signed the Skills Pledge in 2007 and have set targets for education and learning: their people achieved 648 new NVQs and 93 new Foundation Degrees in the last 12 months alone.
“Healthy, happy and here” is the focus of Northern Foods’ inclusive well-being programme across the company. It is responsive to the reality of the differences between socio-economic groups in terms of the national diet and health agenda. It takes its responsibilities to its workforce seriously and strives for a safe, positive workplace. Its Health & Safety performance is good by all international standards, with half the UK average for reportable injuries, but it strives to be great. As a founder member of Sedex, now the world’s biggest ethical trading database, it has opened its workplace standards for employment practice, health and safety to the scrutiny of its trading partners and it has encouraged its suppliers to do the same.
On marketplace: food safety has to be a “given”, but everything else in terms of its marketplace responsibilities is about allowing the customer to make an informed choice. Northern Foods was associated with voluntary back of pack nutrition labelling per portion as far ago as 1998 and it adopted front of pack labelling in 2006. Northern Foods’ policy was developed as a response to new information linking sodium to raised systolic blood pressure associated with age. It has been working on salt reduction since 2002, well before the FSA targets were introduced. HVOs were removed from its products in 2005 and limited, targeted nutritional enhancement – such as the addition of omega-3 to its Donegal Catch Fish Fingers – is available as an option for its customers. It’s all about offering consumer choice.
The environment is an immense global challenge and possibly the area of greatest uncertainty. The new UN global resource projections for 2030, if correct, are stark. It suggests we will have a 25% increase in population; we will need 50% more food (in response to an increasing global population and “nutrition transition” as developing countries consume more meat and dairy products); we will need 40% more energy; and 30% more water – perhaps the greatest challenge of all.
The lack of sustainability of the world food model of the last century, described by some as “cheap food at any price” is increasingly accepted. The issue is: what “good” will look like in the future. Northern Foods will respond to emerging thinking as it always has done. For the moment, the issue is one of responsible environmental stewardship and Northern Foods has long been committed to a trusted, approved supply chain with farm assurance and environmental policies in place for years.. Northern Foods has set targets for its own operations which commit it to reductions year on year of 5% for energy, 3% for water, 5% for waste and “zero to landfill” by 2012. Its responsible approach is demonstrated by the fact that Northern Foods was in the first cohort of food manufacturers to sign the Courtauld Commitment and to demonstrate real progress in reducing the factors that contribute to its carbon footprint.
The forth pillar of Northern Foods’ responsible policies is its response to the community. It is a founding partner of Phunky Foods, an initiative that was launched as a direct response to the 2004 White Paper, Choosing Health. Health professionals know that diet and food choices are set at a very young age. The Phunky Foods programme gives primary school children key healthy food messages. It was launched in 2006 and it will cover 1000 primary schools by 2011. It is now an official part of the Government’s Change4 Life programme.
In addition to the graduate training programme established by Lord Haskins, Northern Foods also set up the Foundation for Food Science and Technology in 2006 to provide undergraduate bursaries for 150 of the top young food scientists. Northern Foods also helped establish a new University of Nottingham Summer School for Food Sciences this year, to help even younger scientists (year 11 GCSE students) to see the potential links between science, university and the broad range of career options available in the food industry. Championing these initiatives is Northern Foods’ way of helping young people learn more about the challenges the global food system will have to face from seven key factors, including: population growth, nutrition transition, energy, land, water, labour availability and climate change.
Bright, young, informed people will be central to facing the challenges of the future. Good business is responsible business and Northern Foods addresses this across its four key areas of the workplace, marketplace, environment and community. Its success in doing so is demonstrated by its “gold” status in the Business in the Community Awards. Northern Foods may not be perfect, but it is ready to change as knowledge develops and new thinking emerges. Constant adaptation is what responsible practice in the food industry is all about.
Jessica Mitchell of the Food Commission
Jessica explained that the Food Commission does lots of different types of work, including writing reports, monitoring the food industry and campaigning. It does not accept any money from the food industry – or any other partners – and it does not receive any core funding from the Government; it relies wholly on its members’ subscriptions and donations. It adopts this policy so that it is not involved in commercial activity of any sort and it can act as an independent voice on behalf of the public interest in food.
Jessica said her first response to being invited to speak at this meeting was that there would be three of “them” on the Panel and one of “me”. When she sits on such Panels she is very conscious that the Food Commission is not part of the same business. Food companies produce and sell food and sometimes do good things “along the way”.
You can compel people and organisations to act in a certain way and then monitor them to see if they adhere to the standards chosen. If you look back through history, it becomes apparent that most major progress has been achieved by company regulation and by being tough on industry, whether it be standards in the meat industry or terms and conditions for staff. Jessica said she goes to a lot of events which give companies the opportunity to report on the good things they are doing and which celebrate progress, but all too often the partners in the community are not represented and there is still much to do. The FSA’s salt reduction campaign has resulted in some progress, but there are still lots of products being sold that are high in salt and there has been relatively little progress in terms of restaurant menus. Similarly some companies have acted to remove artificial colours and additives from their products, but there are still hundreds of companies that still use them.