Sugar Labour and Antibiotics

Happy April Fools’ Day Food Junglers! It’s been a rough ride this past week with investigations coming out left, right, and centre. But at least it’s never boring. Let’s dig in.

This week:

🐔 Chick-Fil-A changes its antibiotics policy in the US.

🏦 Big banks still love the meat industry.

🥕 The UN says that we wasted A LOT of food.

🥤 Sugar production in India is more brutal than we expected.

☕️ Apparently we can use food waste to make coffee…

BUSINESS
AN ANTIBIOTICS SWITCH-UP

Fast food giant - Chick-Fil-A - will be backtracking on its decade-old “no antibiotics ever” pledge to prevent human antibiotic resistance that has been linked to repetitive use of drugs in livestock production.

Instead, the company will opt for “no antibiotics important to human medicine”, which includes the avoidance of medications commonly used to treat people.

Some have commented that the move reflects Chick-Fil-A’s recent inability to find enough chicken producers that supply antibiotic-free chicken.

ZOOMING OUT: Seeing as the meat industry is responsible for 73% of antibiotic use in the United States, leading to a rise in human deaths from antibacterial resistance, this seems like a good move to preserve Chick-Fil-A’s reputation as a family-friendly provider of quality chicken.

CLIMATE
BIG BANKS LOVE BIG MEAT

A new report has found that big banks are still giving billions of dollars to drive the increase in global meat and dairy production.

The report documented that, from 2015 to 2022, financiers provided the world’s top 55 industrial livestock companies with average annual credit injections of $77 BILLION, compromising their own anti-deforestation and environmental policies.

Included in the list is Barclays, which remains the biggest lender to JBS, a Brazilian meat firm and the highest-emitting livestock company in the world. But that’s just scratching the surface.

ZOOMING OUT: Many of these banks say they would not “knowingly” provide credit to large scale meat producers, giving them the room to plead ignorance. But, while they maintain their innocence, the numbers don’t lie.

POLICY
FOOD WASTE HITS A BILLION

According to the UN, households across all continents wasted over 1 BILLION meals a day in 2022, while 783 million people were affected by hunger.

The data also confirmed that food waste is not just a “rich country” problem. In fact, levels of household food waste differed in high-income, upper-middle, and lower-middle-income countries by just 7 kg per capita.

Unfortunately, only four G20 nations - Australia, Japan, UK, and the USA - have the ability to monitor their food waste and the progress that they have made, making any progress difficult.

ZOOMING OUT: The good news, though, according to the UN, is that this is solvable. If enough technological resources are invested into just monitoring the journey of our food, the goal of halving food waste by 2030 could be within reach.

SUPPLY CHAIN
THE TRUTH BEHIND YOUR SODA

A New York Times investigation has discovered that soda brands - Coca Cola and Pepsi - have made huge profits from the exploitation of women and children that work to extract sugar in the Maharashtra region of India.

According to the investigation, female labourers are pushed to work more hours to repay debts and to undergo surgeries to work even longer hours.

Worse still, Coke and Pepsi have done almost nothing to prevent child marriages in the region, which are frequently used as an excuse to put children to work.

ZOOMING OUT: Despite Coca-Cola consultants having visited the sugar plantations in India and admitting the existence of child labour and poor sanitation, few changes have been made. Both Coke and Pepsi have declined to comment in response to the investigation.

THE BRIGHT SIDE
A NO-COFFEE COFFEE

It’s been said that 50% of all coffee-growing land could be non-arable by 2050.

Atomo Coffee has a solution. Since 2019, the company has been “upcycling” ingredients - from date pits to sunflower seeds - to make a coffee replacement.

By matching the 28 compounds, found in conventional coffee, with the compounds found in different parts of wasted food, Atomo Coffee is able to recreate your standard cup of coffee, while using 94% less water and producing 93% fewer carbon emissions. Crazy!

On top of that, the coffee start-up argues that its coffee is less acidic than regular coffee and is high in antioxidants, which we all know and love. Food Jungle approved ✅ 

SHARE THE JUNGLE

Happy APRIL FOOLS everyone! Maybe as a joke you could share Food Jungle with all your best friends…you know…as a joke…😅 

BEFORE YOU GO…

• Hershey’s and Mondelēz are pitching more non-chocolate Easter treats at a time when soaring cocoa prices threaten their profits.

• Shares of Krispy Kreme surged after the company said it reached a deal to sell its doughnuts at McDonald's restaurants across the U.S.

• Cocoa futures for May delivery were up 3.9% at $10,030 per metric ton, marking the first time the commodity broke above the $10,000 mark.

• Trader Joe's has raised its banana prices for the first time in more than 20 years, from 19 to 23 cents.

READ ON

Still want to learn more about the food industry? In that case, I would THOROUGHLY recommend that you have a look at Food Fix, written by ex-Politico reporter Helena Bottemiller Evich.

She uses her years of food and agriculture experience to put together one of the most insightful food publications, covering Washington DC, out there at the moment. Thoroughly recommend! 🤩