The British Retail Consortium has announced a report into healthy eating. 'Eat Well, Drink Well', which purports to show that that the retail industry is at the forefront of encouraging a healthy life style among consumers.
The report outlines the measures supermarkets are taking to encourage their costumers to opt for healthier food choices. It also shows how the retail industry is responding to the Government's health agenda by encouraging consumers to eat more fruit and vegetables.
Retailers' voluntary improvements in nutritional labelling and improvement in the nutritional profile of popular foods - often by reducing the levels of salt - has given consumers access to a healthier diet. This has happened in parallel with other retail initiatives to promote healthy eating and drinking.
The top fifty global grocery suppliers generated a combined turnover of over $900bn in 2002 despite global economic and political instability. According to The Grocer Global Giants Index compiled by OC&C Strategy Consultants, turnover was up by 9% on the previous year with sales increasing by 8%. Top of the class is Altria (formerly Philip Morris) with grocery sales of almost $80bn. Swiss giant Nestle were second with $60bn and Unilever third with over $50bn.
In the UK the grocery market accounted for 48% of all retail expenditure - £106.8bn in 2002, up by 2.1% on the previous year.
The top grocers were net buyers of other companies with the number of acquisitions again exceeding the number of disposals. The evidence suggests that the industry is becoming more adept at post merger integration. Like other industries, global grocery has ditched diversification in favour of intensified focus on core activities.
Martin Deboo, OC&C director, predicts that this year there will be more focus on functional foods and drinks - like dental chewing gum. Products that really bridge the worlds of over the counter healthcare and traditional foods.
The future shape of a food chain moulded by the forces of trade, population growth, environmental issues and consumer attitudes will be discussed at a major two-day conference in London. NFU President Ben Gill will open the Food Production and the New Trade Agenda conference which will be held at Chatham House on 19-20 May.
The conference will consider how international trade could be reformed to meet a complex range of demands ranging from the needs of developing countries to the desires of affluent consumers. NFU President Ben Gill said: 'We are on the verge of a second agricultural revolution where those producing the planet's food will be doing so in a markedly different trade environment.'
Other speakers include senior officials from the OECD, the European Commission and various national governments as well as Agriculture Ministers from Canada and Uganda.
According a new Guardian/ICM poll, over 80% of Britons want food advertisements aimed at children banned or more tightly regulated. According to the poll, 79% think food manufacturers are irresponsible while fifty-two per cent of people with children aged 11-18 are worried or very worried about the health of their food, reflecting the loss of control parents have over their children's diets as they get older. But with more than one in five British children clinically obese, the poll findings will fuel the growing row between health professionals and consumer organisations on the one hand and the food industry on the other over the targeting of unhealthy foods at children.
Debra Shipley, Labour MP for Stourbridge, is calling for a safe period when parents know there will not be adverts for food and drinks high in sugar, fat and salt. However in November 2002 the Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell told a meeting of food manufacturers and advertisers that there were no plans to outlaw food adverts on children's TV. She said that the overall quality of children's programming might fall if there were less advertising revenue available for TV companies.
A call to action will be carried to England's regions by the body driving forward efforts by government and industry to shape the future of farming and food production.
Sir Don Curry's Implementation Group, set up to oversee changes under the government's Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food, is coming together with a wide range of local bodies, farmers and stakeholders to determine priorities for action and to help draw up regional delivery plans. The group, which reports to Defra Ministers, will also meet local farmers and see successful initiatives which are helping to deliver the aims of the strategy.
Visits are scheduled as follows:
14 May: Kent
20 May: West Midlands
10 June: South West
17,18 June: East Midlands, East of England
24 June: Yorkshire and Humber
26 June: North West
4 July: North East
The Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food has £500million in support from the government over the next three years and sets out how industry and government can work together to achieve profitable and competitive sectors which contribute to a better environment, and improve nutrition and public health.
Colin Breed, LibDem MP for South East Cornwall, has launched Checking Out the Supermarkets II, a report into the practices and problems of supermarket retailing.
The report, which is an update on the 1998 original, highlights how little the Government has done to regulate supermarkets' practices and looks at the consequences for the consumer, the environment, and society as a whole.
Announcing the report, Breed said:
'The situation is graver than many imagine, and the consequences reach far into every aspect of our lives; from obtaining medicines to having access to affordable and healthy foods.
'Suppliers and consumers alike, as well as individual shop owners, are being short-changed by a Government that refuses to focus on the effects of the dominance of supermarkets. Something must and can be done, but the Government must act now.
