The Fresh Produce Consortium has responded to a new report by the Food Ethics Council, by saying any realistic vision of future food distribution in the UK needs to have a global focus.
The report - Food distribution: an ethical agenda - provides a thought-provoking vision of the future for UK food distribution, says the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC).
It calls for far reaching changes to government policy spanning climate change, transport, planning and school food, and argues that businesses will be under growing public pressure to prove they can be trusted to make the right choices for the consumer, and take the responsibility for consuming ethically off their customers’ shoulders.
The FPC believes the report is too parochial.
Although fresh produce is often singled out as a guilty party in the carbon footprint debate, fruit and vegetables account for just 2.5 per cent of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, said the FPC. With that context, the FPC believes the debate about the future of UK food transportation needs to be placed in the wider context of the global market, and prioritise the encouragement of more people to enjoy a healthier diet.
“Rather than focusing on the means of transporting produce, the carbon footprint of the whole product supply chain should be considered,” said the consortium. “That way the fresh produce sector can provide consumers with meaningful advice on which to make informed decisions. The Fresh Produce Consortium is working with the Carbon Trust and others to do this.
Chief executive Nigel Jenney said: “To encourage a healthy diet we need a wide variety of fresh produce, regardless of origin or means of transport. Without air-freight, a large section of the grocery aisle would become out of bounds: yet if we swapped our red meat for vegetables just one day a week we could achieve more greenhouse reduction than buying all our food from local sources.”
The UK is more self-sufficient now than before and after the Second World War. Around 60 per cent of fruit and vegetables are imported into the UK but the majority are varieties that cannot be grown in the UK due to the climate.
The UK government recognises the principle that food security is a global issue and has stated that “attempting to pursue national food security in isolation from the global context is unlikely to be practicable, sustainable or financially rational”.
Total airfreighted imports of fruit and vegetables account for a mere 0.2 per cent of total UK greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, there is no evidence that fewer aircraft would fly if consumption of imported fruit and vegetables were reduced - at least 60 per cent of airfreighted fresh produce is brought to the UK in passenger aircraft.
