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EIT Food and Foundation Earth have launched a new alliance to develop internationally adopted and accepted standards for the environmental impact data of food.

Under the alliance, non-profit organisation Foundation Earth has been integrated into food innovation community EIT Food. EIT Food is supported by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), a body of the European Union.

The integration will provide the expertise needed for important advocacy work to develop internationally recognised standards surrounding the use of data to assess the environmental impact of food.

The alliance said it will initially consider the EU policy landscape, “in the recognition that future standards mandated by the EU will likely be of the highest level, ensuring that companies and supply chains can apply one standard for compliance across multiple geographies”.

Foundation Earth launched in 2021 to develop a system for the environmental scoring labelling of food and drink products. This sort of data can be used to enable informed decision-making across the value chain, for environmental and sustainability reporting, and in the development of front-of-pack labelling for consumers.

A growing number of methodologies and labels are in use globally, however, they all adhere to different standards, meaning they aren’t comparable and it is difficult for policymakers, companies and consumers to assess the actual environmental impact of different food products.

“In order for the food industry to meet its net-zero commitments, the complex challenge of environmental data, scoring and governance must be addressed,” the organisations’ said in a statement.

EIT Food CEO Richard Zaltzman said:" Environmental data is a key lever of change for food systems transformation. We are absolutely delighted to integrate the knowledge and capacity of Foundation Earth into EIT Food, which will enable us to take strides towards our shared mission of transforming the food system with credibly collected, measured and evaluated impact data. This will form the basis for decision-making across the food and drink industry, policy, future-proofing innovation in our sector and enabling us to reduce the environmental impact of the entire food system.”

Jago Pearson, chairman of Foundation Earth, commented: “Over the last three years, Foundation Earth has led the European-wide drive towards the environmental scoring of food and drink products. Our work now provides the building blocks for providing consumers with the information they need to make more environmentally-friendly buying choices and food producers with the credible information they need to innovate in a more sustainable way.”

Pearson continued: “EIT Food will inherit a sound body of scientific work, a coalition of the leading political, industry and scientific figures in the field and a network of leading technology partners who stand ready to accelerate Foundation Earth’s founding mission. I look forward to seeing EIT Food inject fresh resources and influence over this issue in the years to come.”

Under the integration, Foundation Earth’s CEO Cliona Howie will now become the director of data impact systems at EIT Food, with responsibility for the International Alliance for Food Impact Data.

Howie added: “Joining forces with EIT Food will foster wider collaboration across all those fragmented initiatives that are individually working on the environmental foot-printing of food and drink products. Those efforts are currently constrained by limited resources, which has slowed progress towards a single European-wide system. This new Alliance will help put an end to unnecessary competition and enable us to leverage a new platform to convene a real solution with a clear roadmap, in the public service.”

“Our focus will be on driving large-scale impact that works across the whole food system and transforming the environmental credentials of the continent’s food and drink industry.”

The coming together of EIT Food and Foundation Earth is set to provide a vehicle to operationalise the vision of a coordinated single standard for the environmental scoring of food and drink that serves as a public instrument across Europe and beyond.

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