Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy has just been given a new lease of life

Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy, when it finally emerged from the Whitehall long grass last summer, was widely regarded as a damp squib.

Draconian plans for new sugar taxes and targets to reduce meat consumption were swept aside.

Yet there was one element of Dimbleby’s proposals that not only survived the delays and policy rowbacks, but has now been unleashed with the potential to set the industry agenda alight for the next decade. The new Food Data Transparency Partnership (ministers were canny enough to drop Dimbleby’s original ‘database’ title, with its Big Brother connotations) held its first meeting this week, beginning a five-year mission to mandate how the industry measures its impact on society in the areas that count.

Human health (including HFSS and the war on obesity), animal welfare, and the impact of Scope 3 supply chain emissions, are without question the biggest challenges facing the industry (apart from the dire financial backdrop of course).

The body certainly boasts an impressive line up: more than 60 industry figures, including co-chairs Chris Tyas, the veteran ex-Nestlé supply chain guru; and David Kennedy, his respected FRIF ‘war room’ companion at Defra.

Potentially it has the best elements of the Responsibility Deal, which floundered amid a lack of government and industry support, while avoiding the bombardment of unachievable targets under the now defunct PHE.

The increasing crackdown on industry greenwashing demonstrates just how vital it is for businesses across the supply chain to have a trusted system of transparent reporting, which relies on all companies using common independently verified metrics to back up their claims, and thus create a more level playing field.

Yet even its most fervent supporters will realise the FDTP is a political minefield. While health campaigners will no doubt seize on the lack of mandatory targets, food and drink companies will be asking exactly what information they will have to provide – who will use it and how. And that’s before we even take into account the cost and technical challenges of providing the data.

As well as avoiding death by red tape, it also cannot afford to be seen as a “naming and shaming exercise”, allowing ministers, lobbyists and even supermarkets to beat up on suppliers further down the supply chain.

Crucially, if it is to succeed it may well require a shifting in the ground when it comes to established use of competitive information, which is seen as such a fundamental by so many in the industry.

This, of course is exactly the sort of stuff Tyas, Kennedy and co did with FRIF during the pandemic, when the industry was in full-on crisis mode. Can it now work to carve out a framework that will help prevent other disasters?