We are working to explore a common vision of 'better' meat and dairy and a set of measures that can be used with food businesses.
We are working to stimulate a 50% reduction in meat and dairy consumption in the UK by 2030, and for a transition to ‘better’ meat and dairy as standard.
The term ‘better’ when talking about meat and dairy can mean different things to different people. Even within the Eating Better alliance of 64 members different NGOs have different interests and measure progress towards better food systems differently. We aim to create a common position bringing expertise from across the alliance on single issues. It isn't about a new certification, more about providing a compass.
The project is supported by WWF, Compassion in World Farming and Food Foundation to explore a common ‘better’ framework that we can use to engage with food businesses. We are consulting the alliance to reach a shared position.
This builds on our work exploring the elements that constitute ‘better’ production in Eating Better’s Principles for more sustainable meat and dairy. We are now bringing together expertise from across Eating Better organisations on how these may translate into recommendations for sourcing policies for food service and food retail.
We will identify pragmatic, comparable metrics to help us track progress against Better by Half: A Roadmap to less and better meat and dairy, published last year, across a number of key issue areas:
- Animal Welfare
- Biodiversity
- Water stress
- Soil health
- Pollution
- Animal Feed
- Antibiotics use
- GHG emissions
Elena Salazar, Policy and Knowledge Manager, Eating Better has said: ‘Calls for less and better meat and dairy have gained large and growing support from the public and food businesses. You can't have 'better' without 'less.' Identifying and publishing metrics for better will build consensus and offer further support to supermarkets, restaurants, caterers and others to do for their customers health, animal welfare, farmers and the environment. We will initially share these metrics to build understanding and then use them to assess progress.’
We will publish these metrics before the end of the year and work with alliance organisations to support and track food businesses to make progress.