Food Ethics Council

Labelling and accreditation systems such as Fairtrade have played a central part in raising the profile of ethical issues in food and farming. Yet debate rages over their future role. Moves towards carbon footprinting and labels, and interest in treating water the same way, have made this a particularly urgent issue.

The March meeting of the Food Ethics Council’s Business Forum brought together key players from 18 leading food businesses and organisations to discuss what is driving companies to differentiate products on ethical grounds and whether this trend adds up to create a more ethical food sytem.

The meeting was chaired by Julia Hailes MBE, co-founder of SustainAbility, author of the New Green Consumer Guide and a member of the Food Ethics Council. The speakers were Ian Bretman, from The Fairtrade Foundation, and Jim Sumberg, from the New Economics Foundation.

The report of March’s meeting is now available online here, and key points we took from it include:

• The UK market for ‘ethical’ food products (labelled organic, Fairtrade or better for animal welfare) grew from £1 billion in 1999 to £5.4 billion in 2005.
• The ethical labelling of products reveals the intense competition on ethical performance that has opened up in the food sector, particularly in retail.
• There is concern this competition may damage consumer trust by generating a plethora of non-comparable ethical claims.
• Dissatisfaction with minimum standards is leading some accreditation bodies to move beyond monitoring compliance to stress the need for corporate commitment.
• Collaboration, combining standards, campaigning and regulation could all help to ensure that competition on ethical performance drives progress across the whole sector.
• Choice editing to improve base-line performance across a broad range of ethical criteria could strengthen trust in major brands.
• Businesses can benefit from involving customers in shaping their ethical policy.