How to tackle food waste: fresher produce costs more, simple as that
Climate vs Cost
One reason that shoppers might be switching
to meat-free products could be down
to one of the biggest problems facing our
planet – climate change. It's an existential
threat, and the plant-based meat market
is demonstrating some impressive stats to
combat this.
At the University of Michigan, a recent
study showed that plant-based burger, Beyond
Burger, uses 99% less water, 93%
less land, and produces 90% fewer fossil
fuel emissions than a quarter of a pound of
regular ground meat.
“I've never seen anything in my career
where you could focus on one thing, get
that to the centre of the consumer’s plate
and, in doing so, you can simultaneously
impact four things – human health, climate,
natural resource and animal welfare,” said
Ethan Brown. “If you can get the price to
a point where it’s cheaper than animal protein,
I think it’d take an unusual consumer
to say they’re still not going to eat it,” he
added.
Driving down the price of any product
relies on scaling up and selling more, which
is ultimately in the hands of the consumer.
What we choose to spend our money on
has the power to make significant changes
within the food chain. With the demand for
proteins like pork and chicken soaring in recent
years, due to the increasing affluence
of some developing countries like China,
the need for alternative protein is even more
important.
The whole topic of meat-free alternatives
has really become a bigger part of the
public conversation in recent years, and it
The future of agriculture ¦ IDM
doesn't necessarily mean it’s going to replace
meat; you don't necessarily have to be
a vegan – or even a vegetarian – to include
some of these products in your diet, and
adding that as part of a suite of solutions, if
done in the right way, could well be a way
to reduce some of our carbon footprint.
Informed choices
Hot off the press at a British printing firm is
the latest innovation by globally recognised
brand Quorn, a company that blazed a trail
35 years ago with a new source of protein
made from fermented micro fungi, which
produces 90% less greenhouse gas emissions
than beef. In 2020, the brand took
the step of declaring the carbon footprint of
their products on the packaging.
Marco Bertacca, CEO at Quorn, told Follow
the Food: “It has been a major undertaking
to calculate the carbon emissions of
our products. The ingredients, where they
come from, how they get to our factory,
the conversion of the product, the storage
costs, the distribution to the retailers, how
the consumer might get the product, how
they store it, cook it and dispose of the
packaging – that’s how complicated the
calculation is. But it’s the role of producers,
including companies like Quorn, to provide
the consumer with the choice, and for the
consumer to make the right step.”
But consumers are only able to make
those intelligent choices if they have the information
in front of them, which is what
labelling is all about. It’s a fantastic idea, but
things will only really make a difference if
other companies, including their competitors,
can be convinced to adopt this kind of
labelling. It is this kind of transparency that
is vital if consumers are going to be able to
make informed decisions about how our
food is produced, something we more often
than not feel powerless about, but there is
one part of a food chain that we have very
real and practical influence over – waste.
Waste not want not
“Food waste might be the most difficult
consumer challenge to address. Roughly
35% of food waste is produced by households.
The real challenge is avoiding the
food waste to begin with – taking the emphasis
away from recycling and composting
food, and figuring out how to shop more
efficiently,” said Amanda Little.
We produce enough food every year to
feed the planet one and a half times over.
Yet, every ten seconds, someone dies due
to starvation or malnutrition. Therefore, our
food system must improve. While our farmers,
food processors, manufacturers and retailers
could all do more, crucially, so can the
consumer.
With around 6% of the annual turnover
of a supermarket evaporating through
expired products, one idea starting to gain
momentum across Europe is protecting
highly perishable products from ending up
as waste by helping the consumer and the
retailer work together.
Wasteless is an Israeli company that has
introduced a pioneering concept already
showing the potential to bring down the
numbers significantly. Using a dynamic pricing
algorithm, it tracks the expiry date of
fresh products and, using special digital barcode,
reduces the price accordingly.
July/August 2021 ¦ international-dairy.com · 17
/international-dairy.com
