'Food Miles' Or 'Food Minutes': Is sustainability all in the timing?

A report of the first meeting in June 2007 of the FEC’s Business Forum

Over the past two years, food businesses and the public have been deluged with reports on the environmental footprints of food supply chains. These studies have arguably made the task of ‘greening’ footprints more complex by revealing that the contribution our food makes to climate change depends on how it is produced, processed and consumed, not just on how far it is transported. The first meeting of the Food Ethics Council’s (FEC) Business Forum asked how far a focus on timing could help cut through this complexity.

The meeting was chaired by Julia Hailes, MBE, author of The New Green Consumer Guide and a member of the FEC.

We are very grateful to our speakers Professor Gareth Edwards-Jones, from Bangor University, and Richard Perkins, from WWF.

Key points from the meeting include:

• Whether fruits and vegetables are in season locally can be the major factor in their energy use and contribution to climate change.
• The high global warming potential of out-of-season produce may arise from production, transport or storage.
• The environmental footprint of food varies through the seasons as well as by place and method of production – carbon labels must represent this variability to drive innovation.
• Data and analysis comparing the environmental footprints of alternative supply chains warrant careful scrutiny – recent marketing claims regarding lamb from New Zealand vs. the UK being a case in point.
• While ‘food miles’ are not a simple indicator of sustainability, the concept may be useful in helping communicate environmental issues to consumers.