The UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change has published a report based on their newly developed Global Calculator tool.

The online magazine The Local in Denmark reports that The Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries in Denmark has launched a new strategy to double organic farming and serve more organic food in national public institutions. The government has set a goal of doubling the amount of organic farming by 2020 compared to 2007. The nation’s public institutions serve some 800,000 meals every single day.

Green Monday is a global sustainability initiative that was designed to promote green lifestyle choices.  In this video Phil Valko, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability at Washington University in St. Louis, talks about the global Green Monday initiative and how making a small change to one’s food choices can have a major impact.

The first progress report of A Better Retailing Climate initiative has been published. It describes how retailers since 2005 have improved their performance against the environmental targets set out in the initiative, and that they have:

This article from Nasdaq describes what they call a “shocking” reduction in meat consumption and how this may impact the meat industry and other sectors. The potential catalyst they argue is the release of preliminary recommendations from the committee of medical and nutrition experts involved in developing USDA dietary guidelines.

This paper investigates the environmental impact of the diets of Australian households at different income quintiles. The paper looked at 2003 household consumption and argues that income affects the environmental impacts of household diet, with higher income corresponding to higher impacts. The higher the income bracket the more was spent on food and this translated through to a higher environmental impact (GHG CO2e, water, waste, energy) at higher incomes.

This major study compiles and analyses global-level data to assess relationships among diet, environmental sustainability and human health.  It evaluates the potential future environmental impacts of the global dietary transition before exploring some possible solutions to the diet–environment–health trilemma. 

In this blog-post for the The Institute of Food Safety, Integrity & Protection (TiFSiP) Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at the City University London and FCRN advisory board member, discusses sustainable diets.  He argues that the pursuit of food integrity and authenticity is also the pursuit of sustainability.

In his article in The Economist, it is argued that China’s insatiable appetite for pork is not only a symbol of the country’s rise, but also a danger to the world from a sustainability perspective. The article discusses the history of pork consumption in China, its cultural and economic importance as well as how it impacts land use and large scale land acquisitions abroad.