Facial recognition could be used on pig farms in China to provide individualised feeding plans. The artificial intelligence system, created by a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce company JD, can also track a pig’s growth, physical condition and vaccinations over its lifespan.

In this report, the Food Ethics Council analyses the 2018 Food Sustainability Index (view interactive graphics here), which ranked the UK 16th out of 28 European Union countries and 24th out of 67 countries when averaged across a range of food sustainability indicators.

The Food Ethics Council has created a new website about food citizenship, aimed at changemakers in the food and farming system, arguing that it is easier to influence the food system when people think of themselves as citizens rather than consumers.

The Food Research Collaboration argues in this report that every form of Brexit (for non UK readers, this is the UK’s upcoming departure from the European Union) will affect the UK’s food supply, and that Local Authorities should set up “food resilience teams” to assess local risks to food provision.

The US Global Change Research Programme has published the second volume of its Fourth National Climate Assessment, which examines the human welfare, societal, and environmental impacts of climate change and variability across many sectors, including agriculture.

FCRN member Helen Harwatt outlines a three-step strategy for shifting from animal to plant proteins as part of climate change mitigation strategies, arguing that not acting on livestock emissions would require unrealistically ambitious emissions cuts in other sectors.

This book, edited by Charis Galanakis, describes many different aspects of saving food and food security throughout the supply chain, including raising awareness, redistribution, policy, food conservation, cold chain, supply chain management, and waste reduction and recovery.

This paper describes eight examples where open-access property regimes do not lead to the well-known “tragedy of the commons” - i.e. overexploitation of the public resource - and outlines conditions that contribute to sustainable use of common-pool resources.

The global supermarket sector's commitments to protect public health are “generally disappointing”, finds FCRN member Claire Pulker of Curtin University. However, some progress is being made address food waste, assure food safety and quality, and support selection of healthy foods.