The full extent of the supply chain chaos being caused by the tragic events in Ukraine are becoming ever more clear.

Yesterday an all-party group of MPs received evidence from a host of industry trade bodies which made for frankly terrifying listening.

Five-fold increases in energy costs, fuel prices tripling, meat producers beginning to wonder when they will start rationing food to retailers, farmers culling their pigs and cows because they can’t afford to feed them. These were just a few of the stories emerging.

With the industry still recovering from a pandemic which started its terrible toll in the UK almost two years ago exactly, this latest tragic twist and turn of events prompted the FDF this week to call on the government to shelve all but emergency legislation to enable suppliers to concentrate on fighting inflation and preventing food shortages.

Specifically it called on ministers to delay the looming ban on HFSS promotions, due to come into force in October, as well as the so-called ‘packaging tax’ targeting single-use plastic, which comes into force next month.

It’s not the first time the industry has called on the government to slam the brakes on legislation and regulation to allow businesses to concentrate on the job of survival.

In 2020, a group of the UK’s biggest suppliers threatened to suspend co-operation with the government’s obesity strategy amid anger over what they said was the “astonishing” timing of proposals for a total ban on HFSS advertising online.

Suppliers including Haribo, Mars Wrigley UK, Britvic, Mondelez International, PepsiCo UK & Ireland, General Mills and Kellogg’s UK & Ireland wrote to the Prime Minister saying they would not engage fully with the proposals because they were too busy “feeding the nation” and dealing with the impact of the coronavirus and Brexit.

That in itself was a repeat of the tactics the FDF used in February 2019 when trade bodies wrote to then Defra secretary Michael Gove withdrawing co-operation from a series of government consultations, including plans on health, because of the threat posed by a no-deal Brexit.

And the HFSS promotions plans were also delayed by an extra six months when health secretary Sajid Javid replaced Matt Hancock, an acknowledgement that the government’s plans and the passage of the bill were still not clear. 

Whether such tactics work in the long run is moot. They risk painting trade bodies as regressive and obstructive, finding any excuse, and having to be dragged kicking and screaming along the path to tackling important issues such as obesity and sustainability.

But the FDF is right: the government should delay its plans for an HFSS clampdown. It’s just that the reason for doing so is not because of the war. No. It’s because of the lousy job the DHSC has done, and continues to do, in preparing the industry (and the public) for these changes.

This week research from industry giant GS1 among 400 businesses found suppliers were horrendously underprepared for the sweeping measures, despite the original time frame having been pushed back once already.

A fifth of businesses were unaware of the new legislation altogether, while almost half felt unprepared for its implementation.

If the former stat is shocking, the latter is hardly surprisingly. Six months before the legislation is due to be introduced there is still no guidance from the government. And we understand it’s received an “unprecedented” 1,200 questions (still unanswered) from the BRC, FDF, ACS - not to mention trading standards.  

And at The Grocer’s sellout HFSS Clampdown conference yesterday, it became all too clear just how much confusion there is.

For example, on the question of whether an independent retailer with less than 50 employees was exempt despite their affiliation to a symbol group, Spar retail director Ian Taylor said it had been forced to tell customers to take independent legal advice – with different lawyers consulted offering different interpretations.

There is similar uncertainty surrounding, inter alia, how to calculate the NPD score, what is considered a ’relevant special offer’, and how the online advertising restrictions and online promo restrictions interplay, revealed FDF UK diet and health policy manager Amy Glass. 

It’s also clear that retailers are still in trial mode, with a presentation from IRI showing that trials only really began in earnest in January.

Some retailers are making assumptions in order to be compliant by the October deadline, but others have yet to conduct even a single trial.  

Under the circumstances there is a compelling argument to look again at the timeframe, as the government is already doing with its plans for a ban on junk food advertising.

The rationale for a further delay is not so that businesses can take their foot off the pedal of reformulation and remodelling but so the industry can rise to the biggest changes to supermarket layouts and business models for at least 40 years with clarity about the direction it’s heading in. 

Today supermarket bosses met with Sajid Javid to discuss the situation, with the health secretary apparently acknowledging the need for closer collaboration.

That could start with ‘The Saj’ and his team visiting a few stores to understand what a big deal this is, not only at a conceptual level, but at a practical level, involving tens of thousands of stores and their often unique layouts and planograms, and needing input from head office commercial, financial, marketing and merchandising teams, as well as operations. 

Even without a cost of living crisis for buyers to manage, it’s a huge logistical undertaking implementing these changes at scale, in six months. Without the guidance it is frankly impossible.  

A delay of a year from the time that the guidance is issued would give more time to solve some of the huge issues facing retailers and suppliers, from clarification of whether all gondola ends are in scope (the draft legislation suggests not) to confusion over the Nutrient Profile Model and what products are in and out of scope, to the real problems facing smaller, less resourced stores.

The principle of accepting legislation to a timeframe, and making assumptions, without the provision of guidance also sets a dangerous precedent for future regulation. There has to be guidance at the same time as the legislation, and a reasonable transfer period, built into the legislation process. Otherwise when clarification comes, and if assumptions have been proved wrong, the industry will have to go back to the drawing board, at huge cost. 

The same, of course, could be said of fiscal moves on plastic tax too. The Grocer revealed last week how surging prices for food-grade recycled content are threatening to wreak havoc with the much-heralded single-use plastic tax.

More to the point the government’s bizarre timing means the tax is due to come into force before the deposit return system which is meant to be the main mechanic for recycling and the revamped system behind the industry’s efforts in the form of extended producer responsibility are in place.

It’s that catastrophic lack of evidence-based planning that has caused so much damage with all the momentous change faced by the industry in the past few years.

And it is on that evidence, not the impact of war, however alarming it is, that the industry should make its case.

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