Yesterday the DH published the latest progress report on nearly 400 food and drink companies’ efforts to tackle burning issues such as obesity, alcohol abuse and excessive salt intake.

But while the data from the Responsibility Deal contains many impressive achievements by the industry to tackle these big issues, it raises just as many question marks over the way the Deal is being run by the DH and the continuing appetite of those companies taking part.

The fact that nearly a third of the retailers and suppliers signed up to the Deal’s various pledges failed to hit the April deadline for reporting does not bode well (we are talking about around 180 companies here) and perhaps explained why the DH put out no official announcement yesterday – bar a couple of lines on Twitter. Instead it left companies to do their own individual plugging on social media.

So amid all the disparate stories, from Mondelez setting a new cap on chocolate bar calories, to Sainsbury’s removing 244 tonnes of fat from minced beef by using leaner meat, to Heineken announcing it is on course to beat its target of alcohol unit reduction by more than 50%, there is very little in the way of a big picture.

For better or worse, today’s media cries out for the opposite. Consumers want to know the key progress being made by the Deal in black and white, and those who support the Deal are desperate for headlines that scream the progress they are making.

The problem with the Responsibility Deal is that the reporting process makes it virtually impossible to get an overall impression of its impact so far – even for those with a Master’s degree in wrangling spreadsheets.

For some time sources in the retail industry and suppliers have been crying out for data to back up the cause but The Grocer understands that any research is still months away. If the DH can’t supply it, even when it has so much data at its disposal, then enthusiasm for the Deal is likely to wane, from participants and the public alike. Meanwhile the industry is likely to face ever more attacks from the health lobby in the run-up to the next election.

Even among the 70% of companies who did report in time for the DH deadline, many have either not filled in the forms completely because they claim elements of the reporting process are flawed, or they have not spent much time doing so, judging by some of the lacklustre efforts. Where does this leave the likes of McCain, which is one of only five companies to sign up to the 2017 salt reduction targets, announced in March? I’ve no doubt it wants to shout about its efforts from the rooftops, while the vast majority of its peers are still working to 2012 targets.

The DH needs to find a way of demonstrating quickly and clearly how much progress has been made under the Responsibility Deal. Last month’s update on alcohol pledges was more successful, even if its data, from 2011-12, was somewhat out of date. After all, if the DH can’t shout about its own Deal, who will?

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