Food: Health
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to introduce mandatory reporting by food and beverage companies on nutrition, health and sustainability metrics.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner
Defra, DHSC and FSA have worked in partnership with food and beverage businesses and academics through the Food Data Transparency Partnership (FDTP) to identify approaches to health and sustainability reporting. Minutes from the FDTP’s working groups are available online: https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/food-data-transparency-partnership.
The FDTP’s eco workstream, led by Defra, is currently developing an approach to standardise how environmental impacts are quantified and communicated across the food system. This will empower agri-food businesses to make data-driven actions to reduce environmental impacts and meet net zero goals.
The Government is not planning to introduce a sector-specific legislative requirement for food and beverage companies to report on sustainability metrics. The Government is currently considering the endorsement of the IFRS Sustainability Disclosure Standards, led by the Department of Business and Trade, to create UK Sustainability Reporting Standards that include reporting against some sustainability metrics. The Government and Financial Conduct Authority will consider whether to mandate these standards for certain economically significant entities across all sectors.
The FDTP’s health workstream, led by DHSC with support from the FSA, was to explore how businesses with more than 250 employees across retail, manufacturing and the out of home (OOH) sector, could report on the healthiness of their sales. Work on the health workstream of FDTP paused for the general election, and DHSC are reviewing FDTP alongside other policies.
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