Food For Good by Michael Heasman

Compass Group Announces Results Of Its Sustainable Seafood Policy

Compass Group, one of the world's largest contract foodservice providers, announced this month the three-year results from the First Phase of its corporate sustainable seafood purchasing initiative. 

Working with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, one of the leading science-based conservation programs for seafood, Compass Group started implementing its seafood policies in 2006, the first time a company of its size had undertaken such an initiative.

In 2006 the company pledged to:

- replace Atlantic cod, a species leading conservation organizations recommend consumers avoid, with the more environmentally sound Pacific cod, pollock and other alternatives.

- seek ways to decrease the company's use of shrimp and salmon that are farmed in an unsustainable manner.

- eliminate all other "Avoid" species found on the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch list.

- increase the its use of 'Best Choices' selections and labeling. 

Over the three year period (2006-2009), Compass Group says it exceeded its targets by decreasing 1.5 million pounds of unsustainable seafood from its purchasing invoices. The company has now achieved a sustainable purchasing rate of 70% for its seafood. 

Over the past three years one of the biggest challenges for the company in achieving its sustainable targets has been addressing its need for sustainable aquaculture. Issues ranged from finding consensus on sustainable criteria for aquaculture production; finding sustainable producers; and finding sufficient sustainable volume to meet consumer demand. 

Compass Group also initiated a 'culture change' in how it went about its business regarding seafood. This included working with its chefs, foodservice directors, frontline associates and suppliers as well as providing educational materials and communications for customers and clients. 

At the same time as announcing these results, the company also set out its plans for the next three years (2009-2011). Key issues to be addressed are engaging the salmon, shrimp and tilapia aquaculture industries to implement sustainable methods and to enable the company to increase the sustainable purchasing of these products. 

The company is also planning over the next three years to facilitate a joint Monterey Bay Aquarium/Compass Group education program on ocean sustainability issues tailored for the company's national and regional seafood suppliers.  

'Trust' In Canadian Food Safety

One of the trickiest practical areas for food business ethics is the question of 'trust' and how to restore and/or maintain consumer 'trust' in food supply.

This boils down, in many respects, to balancing the uneasy relationship between 'trust' in government and its agencies and 'trust' in the food industry to manage its own interests: in other words the 'governance' of our food supply by public and private interests.

Central to this relationship is the understanding of 'risk' and risk management especially important in the case of food where there really is no 'risk-free' option - food and drink by its biological nature is subject to food safety 'risks', from the way it is produced to how consumers handle the food.

The 'trust' balancing act can by illustrated by two recent stories about Canadian food safety and the fact that even with sophisticated food safety practices and regulation in place, 'trust' can be difficult to get right.

At its annual conference this past weekend, the Canadian Association of Journalists' awarded its scathing Code of Silence award for 2008 to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), the government body responsible for food safety matters. The award was given to the CFIA for its: "...dizzying efforts to stop the public form learning the details of fatal failures in food safety". The award aims to bring to public attention the country's most secretive government, department or agency.

The food safety failure refers to the tragic outbreak of listeriosis in Canada in the summer of 2008 associated with prepared cold cut meats (such as ham) produced by Maple Leaf Foods which killed 22 Canadians and possibly sickened hundreds more with Listeria monocytogenes. 

The CFIA narrowly beat the ruling Conservative government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the Code of Silence award which shows how pissed journalists have become with the CFIA. Canadian Association of Journalists' (CAJ) President Mary Agnes Welch said: "The judges were sick with awe at the intestinal fortitude the Canadian Food Inspection Agency gatekeepers have shown. It was clear that the CFIA's guard dogs found something they can really sink their teeth into".

The CAJ said that requests filed to the CFIA for inspections records on the Toronto-area Maple LEaf plant at the centre of the outbreak took nine months to produce and communication records with the company are still embroiled in delays. The CAJ said that for one of the biggest public health issues to face Canada in recent years, details behind the cause of the outbreak, the apparent delay in warning Canadians, and the CFIA's handling of the aftermath remain filled with unanswered questions. 

The listeriosis outbreak did not originate with some small, 'cowboy' food business. Maple Leaf Foods is one of the largest food processors in Canada with sales in 2008 of CAN$5.2 billion. Around half of the cold cut meats sold in Canada are Maple Leaf brands and the company practices stringent food safety.

While Canadian journalists look aim at the CFIA, over the past year Maple Leaf have won plaudits for their crisis management of the outbreak and their openness. As part of this Maple Leaf bought TV commercials for company CEO Michael H. McCain to appear on national TV to apologize to Canadians over the outbreak. 

In an investigation into the outbreak by Canadian business magazine MacLeans (How Safe Is Your Food? by Michael Friscolanti, October 29th, 2008), Michael McCain was described as being: "...surprisingly honest, accessible and genuinely remorseful". In the article McCain is reported as saying: "The most important asset we have is the trust of our customers, and they put their trust in us to perform. It's our obligation to respect that trust".

Yet when it comes to the Canadian consumer, whom do they trust? Well a new survey, published last week, and commissioned by the Agriculture Union wing of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (which represents meat inspectors), showed that the vast majority of Canadians want government to step in and play a much more active role to ensure food safety because they don't trust industry to do the job, according to the survey.

The survey, carried out by Nanos, shows seven in ten Canadians believing government should invest more resources and be more hands-on in policing the safety of food, while only one in five believe the government should rely more on the food industry to police its own safety processes.

Bob Kingston, President of the Agriculture Union commenting on the survey results said: "Public opinion is far ahead of Ottawa's [the Canadian government's] current approach to inspecting food companies for compliance with safety rules. Currently, there simply are not enough inspectors to verify that processed meat producers are following safety rules and that's not good enough for Canadians".

The survey found that 64 percent of Canadians either blame the government for turning over critical inspection duties to industry or business for cutting food safety corners to save money. Only 27 percent, according to the survey, subscribe to the view that the listeriosis outbreak was simply an unfortunate and unavoidable accident. 

Currently a Canadian parliamentary committee is investigating last year's listeriosis outbreak and is taking evidence.

But the outbreak shows the complexity of food safety and 'trust', especially when accountability and responsibilities between the public and the private become central issues. The result for the Canadian consumer is that 'trust' appears to be at a low ebb and there seems to be no clear integrated strategy to remedy this.

REVIEW: Sunny Delight Beverages First Sustainability Report

When I saw that Sunny Delight Beverages Co. had produced their first Sustainability Report I must admit I was not expecting too much from the privately-owned producer of juice-based beverages.

But that changed after I had read the report. It is a clear, focused, and well-written report and I started to believe that they really are making sustainability "a way of life at Sunny Delight".

Sunny Delight Beverages Co. (SDBC) began adding a formal sustainability dimension to their business in 2007 and the company says its sustainability philosophy is synonymous with that of the 'triple bottom line" - that is, it takes account of the economic, environmental, and societal aspects of sustainability.

President and CEO of SDBC Billy Cyr describes the company as on a "sustainability journey". He captures for SDBC the mantra of what has become an important CSR call for action among many food and beverage companies when he writes:

"Our customers now expect that we not only make good beverages, but that we also run our company in a way that is consistent with their values - caring for the environment, the communities in which we operate, and our employees".

Sunny Delight has had a topsy-turvy journey to its present day incarnation. The company was first launched in Florida by Doric Foods in 1964 and over the years has had a variety of names and owners only becoming the Sunny Delight Beverages Co. in August 2004 when Sunny Delight was purchased from Procter and Gamble by J.W. Childs, a Boston-based private equity firm.

Now based in Cincinnati, Ohio, the company is a producer of juice-based beverages in North America and a number of European countries, mainly positioning its products as a healthier alternative to other beverages. Its brands include SunnyD, FruitSimple, Fruit2O, VeryFine, Elations, and Crystal Light ready-to-drink beverages. Net sales are around $568 million ($437m in North America, $131m in Europe). The Sustainability Report details the company's North America operations only.

SDBC's reporting focuses on the areas that they see they can influence, these are: governance and ethics, stakeholder engagement, economic performance, environmental performance (product, packaging, transportation, manufacturing impacts, resource conservation), social performance, and product responsibility.

SDBC have named their environmental sustainability program as "Lean To Green" and unusually for CSR reports, includes details of manufacturing impacts broken down by individual plants; these being in Anaheim, California; Atlanta, Georgia; South Brunswick, New Jersey; Littleton, Massachusetts; and Sherman, Texas.

In terms of its manufacturing impacts, using 2007 as its baseline year, the company has set itself clear targets and plans to reduce its per-unit non-product related water usage by 25% by 2011; reduce per-unit energy use by 25% by 2011; reduce per unit carbon footprint by 25% by 2011; and zero waste to landfills by 2013. The report provides details of the environmental metrics, or calculations being used, so it can be seen how it is measuring these impacts. 

A recurring theme throughout the SDBC report is the emphasis on improving what the company calls the "wholesomeness" of its product portfolio. The most striking example of an activity in this area in 2008 was introducing SunnyD with 25% less sugar for all SunnyD flavors across the United States. Reducing sugar by 25%, the company notes, resulted in 70 billion fewer calories being consumed.

The company is also promising more initiatives from its innovation pipeline to enhance the wholesomeness of its beverages.

As this is a new 'formal' sustainability journey, it is interesting to note how this has unfolded at SDBC:

- In June 2007, SDBC made Ellen Iobst, Senior VP Manufacturing and Technology, its first Chief Sustainability Officer

- In October 2007, the company hired Tetra Tech, an engineering firm with resources specializing in sustainability, to help SDBC develop a formal sustainability plan.

- In December 2007 there were a number of activities to help senior management 'buy-in' to the sustainability philosophy.

- Then in March 2008 a Sustainability Steering Team was formed to lead activities and to establish benchmarks. Around this time the concept of "Lean To Green" came into being, initially from SDBC's manufacturing employees. 

- Finally, in June 2008 the SDBC sustainability action plans were deployed corporately. 

One area where there was no discussion in the report was about the SDBC supply chain and SDBC's relationships with its suppliers - something that is often prominent in other food and beverage company CSR reports. For example, I was left wondering how sustainable is the sourcing of the fruit or juice being used in SDBC beverages? 

For the future I am looking forward to learning how the company communicates its sustainability journey to its consumers and how this impacts SDBC marketing and innovation strategies which, judging by the impressive activity detailed in this report, should result in some novel approaches, not least because the company says it defines sustainability "as ensuring a better quality of life for the people our brands touch..."

Palm Oil And The Problem Of The Transition To Sustainable Supply

One of the on-going challenges of moving to sustainable food supply is the question of the transition period: that is, how do you move from an existing food system to another, hopefully more sustainable, system?

One example of this 'sustainable transition problem' as I am calling it can be examined in my view through the case study of palm oil and the setting up of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

The extent of the transition problem in palm oil was made clear when the WWF, one of the world's largest independent conservation organizations with almost 5 million supporters and a global network active in over 100 countries, released new figures last week showing that only one percent of sustainable palm oil available on the market had actually been bought. That's right, just 1%.

The WWF helped to set up the RSPO in 2002 as an informal international body for the industry to develop palm oil sustainability standards. Companies taking part at this time were Aarhus United UK Ltd., Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, Migros, Malaysian Palm Oil Association, Sainsbury's (one of the UK's top 4 supermarkets) and Unilever. Since 2003 the RSPO has grown to include more than 300 members which between them account for 35% of global palm oil production.

Certified Sustainable Palm Oil (CSPO) first became available on the market in November 2008, but of the 1.3 million tons of CSPO produced, less than 15,000 tons have been sold. 

But why has the need for sustainable palm oil production become such an issue in the first place? It is all to do with the environmental and social impact of palm oil production. 

Palm oil can only be cultivated in tropical areas of Asia, Africa and America and palm oil plantations have often imposed high environmental and social costs due to indiscriminate tropical forest clearing (such as rainforest), loss of habitat important to threatened and endangered species such as orangutan, elephants and tigers, and disregard for the rights and interests of local communities. CSPO provides assurance that tropical forests have not been cleared and that environmental and social safeguards have been met during the production of palm oil.

Palm oil is also important as a food ingredient and currently 43 million tons are produced each year. The largest exporters are Indonesia and Malaysia and Europe is the third biggest importer after Indian and China. 

Palm oil is also being developed as a source for biofuel and this together with food is expected to see palm oil production double between 1999/2001 and 2030. Already Malaysian palm oil interests are reported to be buying up land in both Liberia and Brazil to expand their palm oil operations to meet this forecast demand.

In Europe palm oil is used in a wide variety of foods including margarine, cooking oil, crisps, cakes, biscuits and pastry. Palm oil derivatives are used in cosmetics, soaps, shampoos and detergents. 

Ironically, healthy eating trends in Europe that have seen a shift away from trans-fatty acids have helped palm oil sales since palm oil is an effective substitute for partially hydrogenated soft oils made from soy oil, rapeseed, and sunflower, thus helping to eliminate trans-fats from many products.

But despite the choice of CSPO now available buyers are not switching, perhaps put off by the 15% price differential between certified and non-certified palm oil, and not swayed by the environmental and social arguments this cost represents.

With CSPO sales so low, the WWF also announced last week that it will now assess the world's major users of palm oil over the next six months to publish a Palm Oil Buyer's Scorecard highlighting companies that support sustainable palm oil and exposing those who have not fulfilled their commitments to buy.

Rodney Taylor, Director of WWF's International Forests Programme, said:

"This sluggish demand from palm oil buyers, such as supermarkets, food and cosmetic manufacturers, could undermine the success of the RSPO and threatens the remaining natural tropical forests of Southeast Asia, as well as other forests where palm oil is set to expand, such as the Amazon".  

WWF is now asking all companies buying palm oil to make public their commitments that they will use 100 percent certified sustainable palm oil by 2015; to make public their plans with deadlines to achieve this goal; and to begin purchasing certified sustainable palm oil immediately. 

In an article on palm oil in the UK newspaper The Independent (May 19th) it is estimated 43 out of the 100 best-selling UK grocery brands use palm oil or are suspected of its use since it is often labeled as 'vegetable fat' or 'vegetable oil' making it difficult to identify. The article also identifies the UK companies that have named a date to switch to RSPO supplies: Premier Foods says it will do so by 2011, United Biscuits by 2012, Sainsbury's by 2014, and Unilever, Northern Foods, Kraft and Tesco by 2015.

Palm oil serves as a sustainability case study of how globally linked food systems are, not least in:

- the dependency between North-South consumption and production relationships

- the role of NGOs in raising awareness and mediating processes for sustainable food systems

- the time-scales for change required

- the wide range of interests/stakeholders involved

- how food industries/companies can collaborate on sustainability issues

- how new issues can derail sustainability initiatives (in this case the rush to expand palm oil as a bioenergy source)

- and how a relatively narrow range of often entrenched interests can effect us all and the planet's ecology, in this case through the indiscriminate clearing of rainforest for palm oil plantations.

Different Approaches To Sustainable Agriculture

As I came to write this blog post I felt I was instead setting out a scenario for a new James Bond movie, or even worse, one for Austin Powers. You see, I want to talk about 'world domination'.

Because the world has moved one step closer to the 'world domination' of agriculture by one type of technology controlled by a tiny number of global seed and agri-business corporations after the wheat industry set out last week a synchronized plan for the global introduction of biotech wheat.

If wheat goes 'biotech' it will join the developed world's other major food commodity crops - soy, corn, canola - that have turned over their futures to the GM seed merchants.

In an unprecedented approach to the introduction to biotech crops, the organizations representing the wheat industry in the United States, Canada and Australia, announced they will work together toward the goal of synchronized commercialization of biotech traits in wheat (currently there is no commercial production of genetically modified wheat anywhere in the world).

In a press statement the organizations from the three wheat trading countries said they had agreed it was in the best interests of all three producer communities to introduce biotechnology in a coordinated fashion to minimize market disruption. For food biotech critics this approach might be seen as the bully's boast of 'take it or leave it'. 

The wheat industry organizations see GM wheat as a 'significant component' to tackling major issues facing the industry and biotech wheat is also being put forward as part of the solution towards sustainable agriculture, such as biotech traits in wheat that might lead to better water efficiencies. 

On the subject of sustainable agriculture it was very disappointing to read Richard Black's blog report on the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) annual meeting that ended this week. Richard, who is environment correspondent for the BBC News Website, had been covering the two week meeting, but he writes hardly a news reporter came to the CSD's halls, and hardly a news report emerged. He contrasts this to the 2005 UN World Summit which saw 4,000 journalists attend.

But the problem with the lack of media and public scrutiny, he writes, was that it allowed for some blatant political posturing to pass with little comment. This was particularly apparent when it came to agriculture as Richard says:

"And this is the third big theme I would bring out: especially from the G77 bloc, positions were adopted that from any perspective other than that of narrow politics beggared belief. So we had repeated deletion of the word 'sustainable' from the draft text - especially when placed before the word 'agriculture'".

You can read his full comment piece here.   

To finish on a more positive sustainable agricultural note, check out this short interview with Arlin Wasserman, Vice President Corporate Citizenship at Sodexo, one of the world's largest foodservice/catering companies, on how they are tackling sustainability and why. Good to know not all approaches to food, sustainability and corporate transparency are the same.  

Sustainable Consumer Behaviors Increase Worldwide

India, Brazil, and China top a new survey of green consumers, while Canada and the United States prop up the table of 17 countries included in the study.

In their second annual Greendex survey, which measures and monitors consumer behaviors that have an impact on the environment, the National Geographic Society and the international polling firm Globescan found consumers in 13 out of 14 countries surveyed across two years improved their green consumer behaviors between 2008 and 2009.  

Consumers registering the best year-on-year improvement in environmentally sustainable behaviors are the Spanish, Germans, French and Australians, while Russians and Mexicans show the smallest increase. Brazilians are the only consumers measured in both 2008 and 2009 to show a decrease in their Greendex scores (dropping them from first to second place in the survey).

The 2009 Greendex 'greenest' consumers in descending order are Indians, Brazilians, Chinese, Argentineans, South Koreans, Mexicans, Hungarians, Russians, Spanish, Germans, Swedes, Australians, French, British, Japanese, Canadians, and Americans. 

The Greendex consumer indexes are derived from surveying consumer behaviors across four broad areas: housing, transportation, food, and the consumption of goods. In the category of food, Indians, Australians and South Koreans top this category index, although the Indian score was down this year. Countries in which the average consumers' food score improved the most were Germany, Australia and the United States; those whose score dropped the most were India, Brazil and Hungary.

The consumption of local food and bottled water were important factors in shaping the food sub-index. Since 2008, consumers in seven countries surveyed - the United States, Australia, Britain, France, Japan, Mexico and Russia - decreased their consumption of bottled water. Swedes are the least likely to drink bottled water every day, while Germans are the most likely to take their daily bottled water fix.

Americans, British, Germans and Spanish are more likely now than a year ago to consume locally produced foods several times a week or more. The amount of meat and seafood consumed is also another important indicator used to assess consumer environmental impact across countries - for example Indian consumers' Greendex score is boosted by the fact they eat the least meat and seafood compared to other countries in the survey.

Surveys such as Greendex are helpful in grasping some of the 'big picture' changes in sustainable consumer behaviors, not least that consumers are being active about environmental choices. But the survey also shows that consumers ability to choose 'green' can be restricted such as by the availability of green products and services, the broader societal environments they find themselves, or geographical factors. 

This all adds weight to the need for wider sustainability policies within society and to the need to be a little more cautious about relying too much on the notion that consumers can 'buy' their way (and the world) to a sustainable future. 

Truitt Bros. Turn Beef Chili With Beans Into Sustainability First

Would you believe it? Beef chili with beans is pioneering the future of food industry sustainability programs.

The shelf-stable product, produced by Oregon-based Truitt Bros., Inc, has become the first food product to be awarded the Institute for Environmental Research and Education's Earth Sure eco-label. 

The new Earth Sure eco-label certifies that the product has undergone a life cycle assessment which evaluates the environmental impact of producing and packaging a food product.

The beef chili product can now carry the Earth Sure logo on packaging which signifies the product has undergone a holistic, cradle-to-plate environmental evaluation.

The Earth Sure certification is a specific type of Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) that aims to substantiate a product's environmental claims. The assessment incorporate issues such as climate change impact, soil loss, eco-toxicity caused by energy use in transport and manufacturing, and materials used in production and disposal. 

Peter Truitt, cofounder and President of Truitt Bros. said: "Our customers support companies they can trust and that trust is built through transparency and third-party validation. Our customers can be confident when they see the Earth Sure logo that they are buying a responsibly produced product and that our company is not engaging in green-washing".

The life cycle assessment results for a single serving tray of Truitt Bros. beef chili with beans shows that the environmental impacts are primarily driven by the on-farm impacts, followed by transportation. The actual processing of the beef chili and the shelf-stable tray packaging tied for third place as sources of the life cycle impacts. 

The Institute for Environmental Research and Education (IERE) was founded in 1997 as an environmental not-for-profit with a mission to support fact-based environmental decision-making. The IERE seeks to assist manufacturers with the management of their environmental management systems and impact assessments.

Truitt Bros. is a family owned processor of shelf-stable food products serving both foodservice and grocery retailers. This is not the first time the company has been a pioneer in seeking third-party validation of its sustainability practices. In 2006 the company became the first Food Alliance certified processor in the United States. 

Donderdag! European City First To Launch 'Meat-Free' Day

Growing concerns about the sustainability and human health impacts of current meat consumption patterns took a new direction yesterday when the Belgium city of Ghent became the first in the world to announce it was going vegetarian at least one day a week.

Ghent, with a population of more than 200,000, has chosen Thursday as its day free of meat (and of fish and shellfish) which will be known as Donderdag-Veggie Dag.

Listen here to this short clip from the BBC World Service interviewing Tom Balthazar, the deputy major of Ghent, explaining why the city is going vegetarian for one day a week.

As well as going meatless, Ghent, a city with outstanding restaurants and gourmet cuisines, is showcasing how meat-free cuisine can also be tasty and appetizing and to this end 90,000 'veggie street maps' are being printed to help people find the city's restaurants serving vegetarian food.

The meat-free day is becoming a powerful consumer and advocacy idea. Already in the United States the notion of 'meatless Mondays' is fast becoming the new responsible citizen zeitgeist. The City of Ghent takes this a big step further. The test will be how popular it proves among its citizens, but already other European cities are enquiring to find out how the Ghent meat-free model works.

Meat production and consumption have immense global environmental and human health impacts. The environmental consequences were set out in considerable detail in the 2006 report Livestock's Long Shadow from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The FAO report concluded that the livestock sector has such deep and wide-ranging environmental impacts it should rank as one of the leading focuses for environmental policy.

More recently, Professor Barry Popkin has summarized some of the human health impacts of meat consumption in an editorial in the Archives of Internal Medicine (March 23rd 2009, vol. 169, no. 6). He argues for a reduction in meat consumption as a way to improve global health. Popkin says the nutritional evidence does not suggest we should all become vegans or vegetarians, some meat consumption is beneficial. But he argues there is still the need for a major reduction in total meat intake, and an even larger reduction in processed meat.

Hence the importance of moves such as the City of Ghent. Such initiatives bring into the public spotlight, and for debate, the policies, practices, industries and the consequences of the current meat system for human and environmental health. And, if the 'donderdag movement' gains public traction this will have a significant impact on the meat industries. 

Frito-Lay Exploits The Local Food Trend

Frito-Lay, the snacks division of PepsiCo, has set out to claim the 'local' for its potato chips brand.

'Local food' and reinstating local food food systems is one of the core issues uniting much food activism for decades, but more recently local food has blossomed into a fast-expanding and significant consumer trend.

Now in a truly bizarre marketing twist, Frito-Lay, synonymous with the term Big Food, is taking the local food concept by storm with the launch of its biggest marketing campaign to date to reposition its potato chip brand as 'Lay's Local'.

The 'Lay's local' campaign will feature more than 80 farms from 27 states across the U.S. that grow the potatoes that become Lay's potato chips (which require more than two billion pounds of potatoes annually) and will form the backbone of what Frito-Lay is promoting as its 'local' credentials.

As befitting the irony of this local push, Frito-Lay launched yesterday a nationwide marketing campaign in the United States for its 'local chips'. On May 18th the TV part of the campaign will kick in and feature 'local' potato farmers. The campaign, that aims to "celebrate the local connections of the brand" will comprise national print advertising, on-pack messaging and 40,000 in-store displays as well as the TV spots.

The 'local' angle is part of the Lay's brand re-positioning introduced at the start of the year under the new theme "Happiness is Simple". Frito-Lay says that the objective is to celebrate the brand, its place in Americana, and role in bringing people together. The 'Lay's Local' element builds on this 'Happiness is Simple' theme to tell the stories around the brand's many connections throughout the country.

Frito-Lay, the world's biggest snack-food brand, is not exactly a pioneer among Big Food getting into 'local food'. In the UK, for example, all the major retailers have for some years been exploiting consumer interest in local food. In a further marketing twist, here it is Wal-Mart/ASDA that has been a pioneer in promoting local food in the UK - in 2004 Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, even won the prestigious BBC Food and Farming National Retailer of the Year Award for its work on local food. 

And it is in the UK that Frito-Lay also learnt the power of the 'local'. Walkers, Frito-Lay's name for its market-leading brand of potato chips in the UK, has been running for some time a successful marketing campaign built around the fact that Walkers use British potatoes from British farmers. The U.S. initiative echoes this UK marketing. 

So what are Frito-Lay getting into now it is embracing 'local food'? To understand the 'local food movement' fully, you also need to get into the mindset driving it, but there is no doubt that a dominant consumer concern is about where food comes from and about how it is produced. Frito-Lay are mining this rich vein.

But the 'local' is set for some bigger battles in the near future. There is, in my view, an emerging attack on the 'local'. At one extreme this is positioned as saying that the advocates for local (and usually small-scale) food systems over industrial agriculture are in effect condemning the disadvantaged of the world, especially in developing countries, to continuing poverty and hunger. A more nuanced argument gaining momentum is in effect supporting the status quo, arguing that the 'locavore' model condemns all other models and that there is room for change within existing food supply models. Prominent here is the work of James McWilliams and his already much hyped book Just Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the Future of Food due for publication in June.

Whatever way you look at it the Frito-Lay/PepsiCo local initiative is an amazing appropriation of 'local food' and its conceptual underpinnings. Another key consumer trend, though, is for authenticity, so it will be important to observe if Frito-Lay can scale-up the local. If they can it might signal a turning point in food marketing - the issue is that important - and likewise if the campaign fails it will become a classic case study of ill-conceived food marketing campaigns. The stakes are high in every way.

CSR Report Review: Hormel Foods Corporation

Hormel Foods Corporation, the multinational manufacturer and marketer of consumer-brand food and meat products, published its third CSR report this month.

Based in Austin, Minnesota, Hormel Foods is best known for its pork and turkey processing and marketing and has expanded rapidly in the past eight years, more than doubling sales from $3 billion in 2000 to around $6.75 billion in 2008. The company has around 44 manufacturing plants in the United States and employees 19,000.

Hormel base their CSR reporting around what they term their "vision platform" which they call "Our Way". Our Way consists of five strands: People, Process (environment and animal welfare), Products, Performance, and Philanthropy. The CSR report gives detail and examples across these 5 'P's".

As might be expected from a company rooted in manufacturing and food processing the report is strong in the Process aspect in terms of data and 'benchmarks'. The report sets out policies for Hormel's energy consumption, waste management, packaging use, water consumption, and the company will establish a GHG (green house gas) reduction goal during 2009.

Hormel Foods also appears strongly in its CSR report as a people-centered company and is proud of its diversity programs, training, compensation schemes, and the fact that more than half its employees have worked for five years or more with the company. It also emphasizes its aim to conduct business ethically and to ensure good corporate governance. For example, its employees are required to be trained in the company's Code of Ethical Business Conduct.

In its Product section Hormel talks about its innovation efforts, in particular its 'Go for $2bn by 2012' objective which aims to achieve growth through innovation of $2 billion in total sales by 2012 of products created since 2000; in 2008 the company achieved $1.3 billion of this target. I am not sure exactly how this product innovation relates directly into CSR strategies unless this new stream of revenue is meeting certain ethical or environmental standards - it is not said if this is the case (aside, of course, to the sales revenue contributing to the Performance 'P'). 

The big 'healthy eating' activity Hormel reports on is in the area of salt reduction. Here it shows what can be achieved. In 2007 and 2008, Hormel removed 560,000 pounds and nearly 437,000 pounds of salt from their existing product lines, respectively.

Under its Philanthropic 'P' Hormel is especially active in supporting hunger initiatives in the United States with both money and product donations. An unusual aspect of this work by Hormel is that company also aspires to be a thought leader in hunger and in both 2007 and 2008 commissioned the Hormel Hunger Survey to explore the attitudes and behaviors of the American general public in relation to the key domestic issues of poverty and hunger.

Returning to the Process area, Hormel says in its CSR report that its aim is to set the food industry "gold standard" for reducing the impact of its operations on the environment and is committed to initiating and implementing the highest animal welfare practices in the industry. But I couldn't find anywhere in the CSR report what the 'gold standard' is for the food industry or exactly what the 'highest' animal welfare standards meant other than following industry norms. It would have been good to see more detail here.

Like so many of the food and beverage CSR reports I am reading these days Hormel goes so far but could go much further in detailing its CSR. The report, like most other CSR reports with any merit, follows the requirements of the Global Reporting Initiative G3 Guidelines, but I feel there is so much more that might be said. I don't mean to single out Hormel Foods especially, since this applies across much of food sector CSR reporting. Which makes me think: where are CSR strategies leading - incremental, yet worthwhile step changes, or fundamental strategic, cultural and innovation redesign?