Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of including information on water and energy usage expended in the production of food products as part of food labelling those products.

Across current voluntary industry schemes a wide range of metrics on environmental information are used. The Government Food Strategy announced the Food Data Transparency Programme (FDTP) to address this.

The FDTP will develop consistent and defined metrics to objectively measure the health, environmental sustainability and animal welfare impacts of food, by providing access to rich, standardised, high-quality data so that the Government can track progress towards our shared health and environmental goals in order to make effective policy.

We will work with stakeholders to create a common framework of metrics which the food and drink industry must follow when making voluntary information to consumers regarding their foods emission and sustainability claims.

This mandatory methodology will be for participating companies to consistently follow, providing a common standard where eco-information is voluntarily used should they choose to include such information on their products.

No decisions have yet been made on the metrics to include in the guidance. We will work with stakeholders through the FDTP to agree the inclusion of suitable metrics.