IGD published a report on driving change for healthy sustainable diets on 11^th October. The report looks at how the food industry can drive healthier and more sustainable diets in the UK.

Since 2019, IGD have been conducting real-life behaviour change trials with retailers, testing what works and what doesn’t. The research helps the industry build knowledge around how to shift diets, accelerate the pace of change in food retail and healthy policy.

The latest report highlights the findings from three real-life behavioural change trials:

• Does boosting the value of Healthy Start vouchers help low-income families improve their diets?
• Should plant-based products be sold alongside meat?
• Do promotions on fruit and vegetables drive long-term behaviour change?

This report is second to the report released last year, which has resulted in sustainable diets becoming embedded into the government food strategy. Multiple government departments have joined forces to fund research on driving positive behaviour change for health and sustainability.

Now with the additional challenges we face due to the cost-of-living crisis, the urgency of action has been amplified. High inflation is causing a decline in real incomes and health is failing down the priority list for many struggling households. For some low-income households, the cost of travel will limit their ability to shop around and the cost of cooking a meal may become a deciding factor on what, how often and when to eat.

In previous recessions, there has been an increase in levels of obesity and malnutrition, so we must act now to ensure health disparities do not worsen.

To read the report in full, click here.

Government has now published a summary of responses to the consultation on Reforms to the Packaging Waste Recycling Note (PRN) and Packaging Waste Export Recycling Note (PERN) Systems.

The aim of the consultation was to seek views on several technical and administrative amendments to the way in which the PRN/PERN system operates. These were intended to address some of the issues identified in the current system, including PRN/PERN price volatility, a lack of transparency, and the potential for fraudulent issuing of PRNs/PERNs.

The main policy actions by the governments are:

• monthly reporting of reprocessing and export data by reprocessors and exporters
• monthly price and revenue data reporting by reprocessors and exporters
• amendments to the reporting categories for the revenue received from the sale ofPRNs by reprocessors and exporters
• a competence test for reprocessors, exporters and Compliance Scheme operators

Defra and the devolved administrations will continue to monitor this approach to the PRN and PERN systems and will review again in 2026 to 2027.

The responses to the consultation, which ran from 26^th March to 21^st May 2022, can be viewed here.

A shocking discovery of illegal meat in lorries was discovered at Dover Port earlier this month, raising concerns for the threat of African swine fever (ASF) hitting the UK.

Officials from Dover Port Health Authority (DPHA) inspected 22 lorries and found illegal meat imports in 21 of those vehicles during a 24 hour period, which included 2.5t of illegal pork products.

The inspected lorries originated from Romania, Moldova, Ukraine and Poland and included raw animal products loosely stored in carrier bags and tissue without temperate control, refrigeration or labelling. Some products were also found in holdalls, taped up cardboard boxes and sealed cool boxes, which were destined to be sold at markets and independent stores in Britain.

From September 1, it has been illegal to bring pork or pork products weighing over 2kg into the country unless they are produced to the EU’s commercial standards.

Dover MP Natalie Elphicke said “There are up to 10,000 vehicle movements across the channel each day. It is clear that the risk of maggoty meat, meat of unknown origin, which often means horse or other illegal meat, rotting meat due to the lack of temperature controls, as well as fresh blood dripping on to other products, is of real concern.”

Elphicke also highlighted the ASF risk, citing government warnings that the disease ‘poses a significant risk to our pig herd and out long-term ability to export pork and pork products around the globe.’

These findings illustrate just how vital the new sanitary and phytosanitary checks are which Defra instigated in response to the threat of ASF entering the UK. The more we can prevent the movement of contaminated meat (both illegal and via travellers bringing in food) the better our chance of avoiding an outbreak.