In February I travelled to London to attend the Sustainable Food Conference 2026. This conference brought together the whole food industry, with executives and stakeholders from all the major food retailers and big brands from the UK and Europe.
This was a different conference to the normal veterinary and farming conferences I had attended before. The program for the two days, focused on how the industry are addressing sustainability of their supply chains, from the farmers to their paying customers.
The big companies and supermarkets are investing money and resources into tackling sustainability. Companies like Tesco, have separate departments completely focused on achieving their sustainability goals, from reducing carbon footprint to helping people make healthier food choices.
The big topics of conversation and actions were:
Regenerative farming: if you have read my previous articles, this method of farming aims to work alongside nature and to produce healthy food from farming methods that put back more than they take out. Integration of livestock allows farmers to reduce the reliance on artificial fertilisers to produce crops sustainably with a lower carbon footprints and positive environmental outcomes.
Healthy Food: with the UK facing an obesity pandemic many customers are now ranking healthy food choices in their top three priorities. There is more and more information out there now looking at the health risks of ultra processed foods. People are again trying the eat healthier and the demand for fresh produce is again growing. The industry are facing challenges around education, people have forgotten how to prepare fresh food in a lot of areas of the UK and there is a big lack food teaching in UK schools.s
Decarbonising the supply chain: big companies and the UK have committed to NET zero targets. They are looking at the whole supply chain, with lots of money been invested in green technology such as solar panels on factories, electric lorries and right down to more energy efficient refrigeration. There is a big campaign to increase freezer temperatures from -18 degrees Celsius to -15 degrees Celsius across the food industry. This alone will save 10 percent of energy costs associated with the chilling of food.
Food waste: I knew there was a lot of food waste but according to statistics a third of all food produced globally is thrown away. The UK alone wastes approximately 9.52 million tonnes of food every year. On average each person in the UK wastes 70kg of food each year or about 140 meals. All the big supermarkets and food producers have targets to reduce this massive figure. I think this is one of the most shocking aspects of food production, if we can tackle this big issue and tackle issues of redistribution of food to people that need it, then we can feed a growing world population without the need to increase the land used for agriculture.
I was at the conference with both my farmer and veterinary hat on. I was promoting that an Animal Health Focused approach is essential for companies to achieve their sustainability goals. Farmers that engage with the vets and adopt preventative health care strategies have much healthier and more productive animals. Each kilogram of meat or milk produced from healthier animals has a much lower carbon foot print and higher welfare standards.
The government have UK targets to reduce carbon emissions. They are being advised that we need to reduce animal numbers in the UK by 25% by 2040. This in my opinion is very misguided and misleading the public and industry as a whole. With growing global demand for meat and milk, other countries will fill this demand if we don’t. These countries may not be able to produce food as sustainably as the UK leading to increases in global emissions and land use. The government targets to reduce animal numbers will inevitably achieve their own goals at the expense of world greenhouse gas emission targets.
I am immensely proud of the Uk agriculture, although our farmers and growers already do amazing work, we can keep improving, but this requires the backing of both government and the public. So, get behind our British farmers by buying British and help to reduce our reliance on imported food with higher environmental and carbon footprints.
