Les détaillants doivent aider les consommateurs à « manger écologique »

"Retailers have a key role as gatekeepers as they mediate the nutrition demands of consumers and the supply of thousands of businesses," said Bronwen Jones  of Defra's Food Chain Programme. She also argued that Defra research has shown that "benefits of locally produced food are widely over-claimed" and that the main cost of transporting food results from "road accidents and congestion". 

Therefore, she argued, tomatoes imported to the UK from Spain can be lower carbon than tomatoes produced in Britain, because tomatoe production at northern latitudes is more energy intensive. However, "it is not that clear-cut if we take into account the water use and stress," she acknowledged.

But she added that "you should not assume that the closer a produce comes from, the more sustainable it is," saying the real waste story related to food is the food wasted. "We throw away about a third of the food we buy," she said, describing throwing away meat and dairy products as "the ultimate sin".

"Consumers are often locked into unsustainable consumption patterns due to either economic or institutional constraints, habits or for simple ignorance," said Lucy Yates, speaking on behalf of Consumers International (CI), a global consumer group. Therefore, "consumers want retailers to do more," she said. 

Yates calls this 'choice-editing', which consists of retailers taking the most environment-damaging products off their shelves or improving standards of all products. Greengrocers would namely sell seasonal products, use recycled packaging materials and sell sustainably produced fish and farming products. 

"Retailers must set challenging targets on green issues," concluded Yates. 

Michael Scannel from the Commission's Health and Consumer Protection directorate agreed that helping consumers to make sustainable food choices "is a major challenge for retailers," who could emerge as 'benchmarkers' in this regard and eventually take the lead, at a time when food production's contribution to CO2 emissions is huge and the demand for food is increasing.

Ash Amirahmadi, trading director at ARLA Foods, a major dairy company agreed that retailers play a key role in helping consumers to make sustainable choices. According to ARLA consumer research, environment is "on consumers' radar" but "not on top of their worries". Furthermore, consumers believe that "green choices are expensive and make life complicated", he added.

"Consumers are bombarded with information and just want us [retailers] to make the right thing," concluded Amirahmadi.