The Government’s National Food Strategy, published in June last year, announced the so-called ‘Food Data Transparency Partnership’ (FDTP) – a partnership between government, industry and civil society. The overall aim is to create a shift towards the production and sale of healthier foods, produced to a higher animal welfare and environmental standards.
In order to do this, the FDTP needs to: establish common definitions, metrics and standards for food data to enable comparison; introduce consistent reporting on all the aspects mentioned above to create a level playing field; develop clear and standardised consumer information and provide the necessary evidence to support government and stakeholders to make informed policy, decisions or evaluation.
We understand that the ‘Design Partnership Group’, which is made up of industry representatives across and government officials have met at the beginning of February for a kick-off meeting and the aim is to develop a number of proposals to be consulted on this year. This should include a proposal to implement mandatory public reporting against a set of health metrics and explore a similar approach for sustainability and animal welfare.
This is very important in the context of agreeing a consistent approach to measuring Scope 3 GHG emissions. We understand that working groups and task forces will be created to discuss policy proposals and their operational feasibility. The secretariat has already contacted Defra officials informing them of our interest to be involved in this work and we will update members as soon as the works begins.
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