Global Forest Coalition and Brighter Green have just released a new report, “Meat from a Landscape Under Threat: Testimonies of the Impacts of Unsustainable Livestock and Soybean Production in Paraguay.”  

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”.

This report by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee focuses on food security. The report makes recommendations for managing consumer demand, such as by encouraging the purchase of sustainably sourced products or the most nutritious food in order to help deliver environmental and health goals. It does not argue that there should be any further degree of compulsion on individuals.

This new study finds that GHG emissions from growing crops and raising livestock are now higher than from deforestation and land use change. It combines three global datasets of greenhouse gas emissions for the 'Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Uses' (AFOLU) sector. It includes emissions from different sectors and human activities such as deforestation, clearing and burning biomass, and from raising and feeding livestock.

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.

This paper explores links between lifestyles, diet and health in Italian generations X (born: 1966-1976) and Y (born 1980-2000), and compares their dietary preferences, using the years 2001 and 2011 as reference points. The researchers argue that policy needs to address specific segments of these generations more likely to eat an unhealthy diet and to focus on behaviour change through communication campaigns.

This study surveys Italian consumers to explore whether there is a relationship between health and environmental sustainability concerns in their food choices. Abstract The objective of the study is to analyze if there is a relationship between health and environmental sustainability concerns in food choices. We used data of 300 Italian consumers collected through a vis-à-vis survey. We performed cross-tabulations and chi-square tests for a selected set of variables measuring both types of concerns, segmenting the sample by age, gender and education.

Late December last year Tara Garnett, researcher on food systems and climate change and coordinator of the FCRN, initiated a meeting that brought together Marian Dawkins, Prof in Animal Behaviour at Oxford University, Jude Capper, researcher and livestock sustainability consultant who has worked mainly in the US, and Elin Röös, Swedish LCA researcher and the initiator of the Swedish Meat Guide,  for an informal discussion on the subject of sustainable intensification of agriculture and what that entails for the animal welfare of farm animals.

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.