A new technology using a harmless laser beam can replace stickers on fresh food produce with a direct marking on the skin of a piece of fruit or vegetable. Named ‘Natural Branding’, the innovation could result in significant savings in sticker use as well as packaging. Nature and More, a Dutch organic food exporter, in collaboration with Swedish supermarket ICA is now using the branding on organic avocados and sweet potatoes.

This report by The Food Foundation describes typical British family diets, their healthiness and environmental footprint, and in particular the social and economic drivers that influence typical food choices.

In this blog-post, various archetypes or tropes of consumers are portrayed and scrutinized. General claims about consumer behaviour that pervade the discourse of food politics are discussed and three archetypes are identified. The author, Dr Ben Richardson from the Department of Politics and International Studies at University of Warwick, describes and questions both the figures of the food consumer being presented to us and the ideological projects with which they are associated.

Unsustainable patterns of consumption and production threaten global development and environmental well-being. Ensuring sustainable consumption and production should take a life cycle approach, and central to this is the development of product sustainability information (PSI). This publication provides four key recommendations in order to advance a coherent and context-relevant use of PSI that is useful for consumer decision-making:

This report highlights the development and roll-out of a new Global Farm Registry, which will provide a framework to support the global identification, traceability and sustainability performance of farms and producers around the world. It will allow individual producers to voluntarily share their sustainability standards certification status and other production information, to determine their compliance status against other sustainability standards (international, national and retailer, Hospitality and Food Service and brand-owner-specific standards) and to increase their access to new customer and markets.

In December 2014 the Food and Feed LCA database from PE INTERNATIONAL was released.  It includes over 350 cradle-to-gate and gate-to-gate LCI datasets representing the most commonly used food and feed products in different geographical regions:

This commentary from Confectionary news argues that suppliers of ingredients should set targets to achieve fully sustainable cocoa and it states that standardisation is crucial since more than 80% of the produced cocoa in the world is now unaccounted for. The article states that the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will be introducing a voluntary joint standard for traceable and sustainable cocoa in 2016.

The latest survey by the Food Standards Agency presents results on reported behaviours, attitudes and knowledge relating to food safety issues. It provides data on people’s reports of their food purchasing, storage, preparation, consumption and factors that may affect these, such as eating habits, influences on where people choose to eat out and experiences of food poisoning.

The Sustainable Seafood Coalition (SSC) has launched a new 'labelling code', intended to ensure that consumers are sure about what environmental claims on fish and seafood mean. A new 'sourcing code' accompanies the labelling and ensures that the coalition members source their fish and seafood products responsibly.