European East-West Trade and the United Kingdom's Food Supply

In September 2019, the U.K. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee warned that the United Kingdom's food supply was vulnerable to climate change. Within the U.K. food retailing is highly concentrated with the four leading food retailers accounting for almost 70% of all food sales. In the face of the threat of climate change to food supplies, a focus on resilience might be seen to have much to offer retailers. However, little work has been published in the academic literature on if, and how, retailers are employing the concept of resilience in their business plans. With these thoughts in mind, this commentary paper provides an exploratory review of how the United Kingdom's four leading food retailers, namely Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, and Morrisons, have publicly acknowledged the importance of resilience in the face of climate change. The paper outlines definitions of resilience and retail resilience, draws out four general themes within the U.K. food retailers' resilience plans, and offers some wider reflections on the retailers' resilience plans in the face of climate change.

Just over half the United Kingdom's food requirements are produced within the United Kingdom or about two‐thirds of all the kinds of food that can be grown in our climate. The opposite tables show the main sources from which selected items of food were obtained in 1973 and 1974, together with averages for the three‐year period 1964–66.

The British government published its new food strategy in January 2010, entitled ‘Food 2030: How We Get There’. This emerges out of a considerable amount of policy activity and debate since the sharp rises in food prices during 2007–2008. This demonstrated the need both to now have an explicit food policy, and to position this as a goal across various government departments. In addition, it is recognised that food security and hunger are key global concerns. How does the strategy face up to the arrival of these new and combined challenges associated with the need to produce more food sustainably and to allocate it more fairly? Clearly, we are in a period of new productivism with regard to trying to solve national and international food security and sustainability issues. Yet this strategy misses an opportunity to stimulate a new strategic approach in enhancing and developing the United Kingdom's food supply system albeit in its international context. We need more governmental and political innovation and imagination if we are to meet these challenges. The new food strategy may come to represent the start of this process.

The history of food is replete with examples of food scandals leading to institutional and procedural reforms intended to rebuild trust. For trust to be sustainable, systems need to be trustworthy. Food regulatory institutions are at the interface of science and policy, and they should have robust and reliable mechanisms for identifying and addressing commercial conflicts of interest (COIs) among the membership of their boards and advisory committees. Here we provide a detailed estimate, analysis and critique of COIs within the United Kingdom's food regulatory institutions. This exercise was facilitated by the United Kingdom's rule requiring declarations of COIs, which are published. Institutions that require and publish declarations of COIs are probably more trustworthy than those that do not, while institutions that exclude all individuals with COIs could be even more trustworthy.

The United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency is to consult consumers on mandatory food fortification with folic acid to help prevent neural tube defects. A 12 week consultation will start in...

The Assessment of Food Safety Culture: An investigation of current challenges, barriers and future opportunities within the food industry

The Food Standards Agency, the United Kingdom's food safety watchdog, has launched a campaign to encourage people to reduce the amount of salt in their diet. It recommends that individuals...

Intensifying global competition and more demanding customers places a requirement on the food retail industry to be even more efficient in seeking, exploiting and sustaining competitive advantage. Membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the subsequent developments in the Chinese economy make the country very attractive to global retail organisations. The study presented in this paper explores and analyses the primary sources of difference that account for divergent developments between the United Kingdom (UK) and Chinese food retailers. Through the use of literature, market data and case studies, the impact of industry-level and organisation-level factors on competitive advantage in both markets are analysed. Key differences are identified with respect to government policies, shopping attitudes and supply chain configuration among others. The study also identifies crucial operational initiatives China's domestic food retailers need to embrace if they are to compete successfully with the new global entrants.

The three aims of the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency will be to put the consumer first, to operate in a transparent way, and to be an independent voice, the...

Emerging and legacy flame retardants in UK human milk and food suggest slow response to restrictions on use of PBDEs and HBCDD

Brexit, the exiting of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU), has impacted socio-political relationships, both internally, and externally with other countries and economic groups. This has been especially true regarding international trade, and legal and market standards for food and food security. This paper examines how the enacting of Brexit has framed and underlined contemporary perceptions of the UK neoliberal food system, the relative importance of food standards, and the impact of policy transition on food security. Using a positional approach, perspectives and narratives within the literature are critiqued and synthesized, including academic sources, parliamentary debates, economic reports, and media analysis. The politico-economic effects of Brexit have altered food-related relationships, recalibrating trade interactions and changing the public funding that UK farmers receive. Through realigning extractive economic models, the pre-Brexit UK food system has been reset, and new perspectives about neoliberalism have emerged. Government intervention has steered away from traditional neoliberal framings towards neo-developmentalism. A dichotomy thus exists between recognizing the intrinsic right to adequate and nutritious food and maintaining existing cultural dynamics of food supply, and the use of agri-food policy as a politico-economic tool to drive higher economic growth. The implications of this policy change are stark for UK agri-food actors within food system transition post-Brexit.

It is hoped in this chapter to cover some of the many ways of ensuring that quality manufacture of flavourings is defined, thus ensuring that quality, commitment and good manufacturing practices are not only carried out but seen to be carried out. The current thrust of regulation, in its broadest sense, including legislation, customer audits, profits, batch traceability, supplier audits, etc. is written evidence. Flavourings are ‘food’, as defined, for example, by the 1990 United Kingdom (UK) Food Safety Act, and require the same standards of control.

With the development of globalisation, countries such as the United Kingdom (UK) heavily rely on shipping for food imports and supplies. With the unpredictable impacts of black swan events, such as the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak and the armed conflict between Ukraine and Russia, which are traditional food export countries, global freight supply chains could dramatically change, which significantly affects the global food supply chain (FSC) resilience, requiring new solutions to be found. Therefore, it is vital to assess a country’s food importing system by sea to ensure its FSC resilience. However, it is challenging to analyse different food supply resilience levels on a national scale given the high uncertainties in the key relevant elements (e.g. food supplies and transportation) influencing FSC resilience. This paper aims to develop a new method to assess FSC resilience at a country level by pioneering the combination of the two most relevant attributes, its production-to-supply ratio and shipping transport connectivity, used to present food supply security separately in the current literature. Within this context, food production and import distance affecting the connectivity of various food supplies are selected to estimate FSC resilience in this study. The findings, including a new index framework to assess national food resilience, significantly contribute to a country’s food security and the rational development of countermeasures and policies when necessary. To demonstrate the significance of the findings, the resilience of the UK FSC is first evaluated in a real case study, followed by a comparative study with Canada, Australia, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the FSCs of different countries. The findings of the studies can be used to monitor FSC resilience of the countries and provide rational policies for enhancing FSC resilience.

Food systems contribute 23–42% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing food system emissions is an essential component of climate change mitigation, and a system-wide approach, including production, processing, trade and demand-side transformations, will be needed. Long-term analysis of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of food supply is crucial for informing this transformation, and understanding the processes contributing to existing trends can reveal opportunities for future mitigation strategies. To address these needs we used data on food supply, trade and emission intensity to quantify changes in GHG emissions between 1986 and 2017 resulting from food supply in the United Kingdom (UK). Uniquely, the relative contributions of supply-side and demand-side changes to historical trends in food emissions were assessed, and the gap between current UK food consumption and EAT-Lancet recommended diets was used to estimate the additional GHG emission reductions that could be achieved by shifting to the Planetary Health Diet (PHD). It was estimated that in the UK, per-capita GHG emissions from food fell by 32% (from 4.6 tCO2eq/capita to 3.1 tCO2eq/capita) between 1986 and 2017. Of this 32% reduction, 21% was due to supply-side changes (a fall in emission intensity per unit of production due to increased efficiency of farming practices), 10% was due to demand-side changes (including dietary change and waste reduction), and 2% was due to changing trade patterns. Relative to the PHD, however, the average UK citizen still greatly over-consumes beef, lamb and pork, tubers and starchy vegetables and dairy products, and under-consumes vegetables, nuts, and legumes. It was estimated that by adopting the PHD, UK per capita food emissions could be reduced by a further 42% to 1.8 tCO2eq/capita. These results expose the historic contributions of both supply- and demand-side changes to reductions in GHG emissions from food, and highlight the underutilised potential of dietary change in contributing to mitigation of GHG emissions from food.

Poor diet is a leading risk factor of non-communicable diseases. Product placement strategies in retail outlets can influence customers' food preferences. The United Kingdom government introduced legislation in October 2022 restricting chain retailers from using location promotions on unhealthy food and drinks. High-quality scientific evidence is needed to inform the inclusion of healthier product placement approaches into these regulations. In the context of Brexit, COVID-19 and the cost-of-living crisis, this study assessed whether positioning an expanded fresh fruit and vegetable section near store entrances in discount supermarkets, which do not routinely market produce this way, improved store sales, household purchasing and diet. This natural experiment had a prospective matched controlled cluster design, involving 36 stores (18 intervention and 18 control) across England. The intervention was implemented continuously for 6 months. Control stores were matched on store sales, customer profiles and neighbourhood deprivation. Participants were women, aged 18-60 years, with loyalty cards and were assigned to their primary store (n = 280 intervention and n = 300 control). Weekly store sales and household data from loyalty cards were provided by the collaborating supermarket chain. Dietary quality, household food waste and demographic characteristics were collected through questionnaires. A process evaluation and economic evaluation were completed. Store-level sales of fruit and vegetables were greater in intervention stores than predicted at intervention implementation and 3 and 6 months' follow-up, equivalent to ≈ 2525, ≈ 1940 and ≈ 1450 extra portions per store per week, respectively. Effect sizes were somewhat stronger in stores where the produce section moved forwards more than 14 m. The proportion of households purchasing fruit and vegetables were somewhat protected among intervention compared to control participants after 3 and 6 months. Changes in dietary quality were small but generally in the expected direction for health benefit. Changes in frequency of household fruit and vegetable waste were negligible at 3 months' follow-up but increased at 6 months. The intervention was implemented according to the study protocol, with marked differences in the positioning of fresh fruit and vegetables between intervention and control stores post-intervention implementation. Fresh fruit and vegetable availability increased post intervention in intervention compared with control stores. Interviews with store staff demonstrated that changes in staff attitudes had a positive reinforcing effect on intervention implementation. Assessment of the policy context showed that stakeholders across the food system largely support the United Kingdom government's unhealthy placement ban; some felt it does not go far enough. This study shows that positioning produce sections near supermarket entrances can improve the nutrition profile of store sales and may improve household purchasing and diet. The United Kingdom Food (Promotion and Placement) Regulations could be refined to require a produce section near supermarket entrances to increase its health impact. Future research should continue to build the evidence for which healthy eating interventions are effective in retail outlets. Further evaluations of real-world supermarket intervention studies using robust scientific study designs are required, alongside process and economic evaluations, to provide evidence for policy intervention to improve retail food environments in the United Kingdom and internationally. This synopsis presents independent research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Research programme as award number 17/44/46.