McDonalds has announced that it will begin using “verified sustainable beef” in some of its hamburgers by 2016. In this article however, it is questioned “what exactly is so sustainable – or indeed verifiable – about the beef of the future”.

The report Deforestation-free supply chains: From commitments to action, published by CDP, highlights ways in which industry can be part of tackling the deforestation crisis while still securing and maintaining access to their sources of profit.

This study reveals that consumers tend to underestimate calorie counts for companies with positive corporate responsibility programs, and then consume more of the foods produced by them. The study suggests that consumers may infer (often incorrectly), that if the company is engaged in doing ‘good deeds’, their products are healthy. For the research, they split participant groups between two fictional product launches, one company with a positive CSR profile, and the other with neutral CSR, and determined that participants consuming products from the positive CSR profile, ate more. Furthermore, these participants also underestimated the consumed calories for the company with the positive CSR.

This debate, held on 8 July 2014 and hosted by the Green Alliance, discussed the question “Feeding Britain: Can we do it sustainably?” It focused on how prepared companies are for changes in food supply and price shocks, how sustainability fits within the approaches they are currently using, and whether UK food security can really be delivered sustainably.

The International Trade Center’s (ITC) Trade and Environment Unit has recently released a training manual aimed at addressing climate change in the tea sector. With climate change already having an impact on both the quality and quantity of tea the manual sets out to help tea farmers and factories lower their emissions and reduce energy costs. One of the reasons for the focus on factories is that exporters are increasingly subject to requirements set by buyers and retailers to measure and reduce carbon emissions.

This blog from WWF Livewell campaign discusses a joint statement from a group of influential food industry stakeholders, stressing their concerns about global food system sustainability and urging the European Commission to play its part.

On 28 April 2014, Unilever held an event where it discussed its progress on the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan and what more the company could do to help make sustainable living commonplace.