FSA Science Council Working Group 6 Food Safety and Net Zero Carbon July 2022 Interim Report

Abstract

The UK has a legal commitment to reach net zero carbon (NZC) emissions by 2050. This is a topic that has recently been building momentum, with clean growth being one of the four Grand Challenges set out by the UK Government. The ways we grow, process and transport food are major contributors to climate change, accounting for more than a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions. Reducing this will require substantial changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transport. Consequently, the Science Council and FSA Chief Scientific Adviser (CSA) agreed that a deeper understanding of the potential implications of achieving net zero on food systems, together with identification of areas of uncertainty, would be of considerable value to FSA in pre-empting future policy and evidence needs in this area. In early discussions to scope the work required, Defra indicated to the FSA Science Council Secretariat that there are many new developments and changes to activity in primary production aimed at achieving net zero. The Science Council agreed, therefore, to concentrate its first investigations on changes expected in primary food production. Primary production is the production of chemical energy in organic forms by living organisms. The main source of this energy is sunlight. For the purposes of this review, primary food production includes the growing and harvesting of plants as food for humans or feed for animals, and the rearing and slaughter of animals including livestock, fish and a wide variety of aquatic and marine organisms. A Science Council Working Group 6 (WG6) began work in summer 2021, led by Science Council members Mrs Claire Nicholson (WG6 Chair) and Prof Jonathan Wastling (WG6 Deputy Chair). The brief for WG6 is to investigate the potential food safety implications arising from changes to primary food production practices and technologies that reduce carbon emissions in the next 10 years. The work programme (described in this report) covers 4 phases, with phases 1 and 2 now complete. The work so far has drawn diverse, wide-ranging, sometimes slightly conflicting, views and opinions from across academia, the FSA, Defra, industry bodies and individual food producers. This interim report summarises: The work undertaken to date (phases 1 and 2) What has been learnt including changes to practice already underway or imminent Issues arising from the changes that the FSA should be aware of Further work planned by WG6 to understand the nature of the risks in more depth (phases 3 and 4) The Science Council aims to complete its investigations by the end of 2022 and present its findings to the FSA Board as soon as possible afterwards.