Global Dairy Platform commend the CFS and HLPE for the approach with this initiative. We believe that providing nutritional security, improving sustainability and reducing the risk of diseases related to poor quality diets will be the defining issues of the 21st Century.
GDP leads the development of a collaborative, unified approach on common dairy industry issues and the nurturing of innovative research so that consumers value milk and dairy products as naturally nutritious, enjoyable and an essential part of a healthy diet. Our membership of CEOs, executives and researchers from corporations, communication and scientific bodies work in partnership to align and support the dairy industry in the promotion of sustainable dairy nutrition.
In the coming decades, a growing and increasingly affluent global population will demand a greater quantity, variety and nutritional value of food than the world has ever produced before. (Putting the New Vision for Agriculture into Action: A Transformation Is Happening. A report by the World Economic Forum’s New Vision for Agriculture initiative). NGO’s and world bodies are recognizing the importance of agricultural biodiversity in defining a sustainable food system and diets. While such recognition is encouraging, the fact is that there is little evidence based knowledge on sustainable food systems and diets to build recommendations and policy upon. It is important to note that changes in one part of the food system will have consequences (intended or unintended) in other parts of the food system, thus the critical requirement for adequate research data.
This creates a potential scenario where, in the rush to promote specific recommendations, incomplete science or poorly constructed research is used. History has shown that conclusions drawn from such research can create unintended consequences for public health, economic resilience, livelihoods and environmental tradeoffs. Sustainability is about finding the balance.
With the knowledge base of sustainable food systems in its very early stages, we encourage the HLPE to identify and recognize the gaps in current research and to adopt a process that ensures that decisions impacting policy are based on complete, well-designed, evidence-based research. Where evidence is missing, incomplete or poorly constructed that recognition is given to the work that needs to be undertaken before conclusions can be reached.
In 2014, an interdisciplinary consensus committee hosted by the United States Institute of Medicine (IOM) examined the interdependencies of a sustainable food system. In early 2015 the IOM released a report detailing conclusions from that committee. The report, entitled “A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System.”, compared different food systems and suggested that when evaluating food systems consideration must be given to not only human and environmental health, but also social and economic factors. (IOM 2015 A Framework for Assessing Effects of the Food System http://iom.nationalacademies.org/Reports/2015/Food-System.aspxDaly’s) The report concluded that a framework is needed, encourages inter-disciplinary research and that conclusions at this time are not prudent. We would encourage a framework and lens of questions that span social, economic, environmental mitigation and adaptive frameworks for food systems.
The Sustainable Development Goals is a starting framework for sustainable food systems. The dairy sector contributes more than just nourishing foods to the world’s population. Every day, the lives of nearly one billion people globally are sustained through contact with the dairy sector in rural communities in all corners of the world. Families find daily nourishing strength and maintain positive health. Women are empowered and children receive adequate nutrition for learning and achieving their potential. Family farmers care responsibly for livestock and strive to make their land better for future generations.
In particular, dairy uniquely provides for billions of people to receive important nutritional benefits from consuming milk and dairy products. Dairy foods nutrient-rich packages provides not just basic nutrition but better nutrition. Ongoing research continues to provide a deeper understanding of the nutritional value people get from food.
The dairy sector is essential to growing inclusive and transformative economies. The dairy sector makes an impact on improving livelihoods and social inequity through the social fabric of rural communities. Diary has an active role in alleviating poverty and unemployment. It also acts as an economic multiplier in rural economies as dairy acts as an enabler of agriculture. Of particular importance to traditional disadvantaged segments of society-small landholders, landless laborers and women, dairy can provides a transformative economic solution. There are approximately 121 million dairy farms in the world today, supporting a long tradition of milk production through cooperative structures or selling directly for consumption. Globally, there are approximately 600 million family members living on dairy farms, caring responsibility for livestock and tending to land management. In addition there are a further 400 million additional family members supported by the jobs that are created “downstream” such as milk collection, processing and retail.
Dairy products can enable and support the foundations for food security and peace. Milk product and consumption are the most important stable resources of year round cash flow and nutritional intake for rural populations. Families, and specifically women, are empowered by their social responsibility for cattle rearing and dairy production, resulting in food security at both the household and national level and income for farmers. Diary as an income generation tool can provide affordability and contribution for the basic necessities - food, water; shelter and clothing - of life.
Climate adaptive agriculture is ever more imperative and the dairy cow is uniquely suited to cycle carbon while producing nutrient dense foods. Yield improvements, feed efficiencies, use of human food by-products and manure use can help better contribute to food systems not only for dairy but for the rest of agriculture. Frequently, dairy farmers are not just dairying but also farming other forms of agriculture to cycle nutrients of feed, fiber, and nutrients. Mitigation and adaptation is recognized within the global dairy industry who have developed the Global Development Agenda for Action Sustainability Framework. The framework categorizes 11 continuous improvement areas. Currently 17% of the global milk production, over half a million farmers and nearly 18 million cows participate in the framework.
We again thank the panels for providing broad thought provoking questions and hope that the panel will encourage an inclusive and diverse approach to developing a framework for the discussions. We have attached a compendium of research we have tracked on the topic to help the panel’s research library. Below please find our specific comments on the thoughts raised:
- What are the links between diets, consumption and consumer habits and food systems?
· GDP agrees with the framework described in the IOM report referenced earlier and the importance of interdisciplinary thinking and research. To address the links between diet and health, we also would recommend that the HLPE explore current reliable science based indicators on human health, and believe that Disability Adjusted Life Years may represent the best approach of examining the intersection between nutrition and the environment on health. (Stylianou et al., 2015. A life cycle assessment framework combining nutritional and environmental health impacts of diet: a case study on milk. International J or LCA, 2015). We would encourage the HPLE research teams to continue to invest in research that identifies validated indicators that bridge nutrition and environmental impacts on health.
- What are the determinants of the changes in consumption?
· All foods can fit into a healthy, sustainable diet. We must be mindful of whole patterns of balanced eating as opposed to focusing solely on limiting or encouraging one type of nutrient, food or food group in the diet for either nutritional or environmental purposes.
· Overconsumption, in general, continues to be a problem throughout the world and contributes to the obesity epidemic. Additionally, food waste is a major problem in developed nations. We recommend that attention be given to helping to reduce both overconsumption and food waste.
· When making recommendations, we need to be careful to not pick foods and recommendations that could have profound impact on the environment because of their limited availability and trade-offs. We need to make the most of available foods and be mindful of recommendations that could have trade-off implications. With diets, a reduction or recommended substitute usually means an increase in consumption of another food sources. Having the discussion of trade-offs and striving to avoid unintended consequences is important. For example, making recommendations to consume more fish could have unintended consequences if the entire food system is not considered. For example, is there enough fish available to meet population-wide recommendations? What is the environmental impact of overfishing? Will those who do not eat fish regularly begin eating fish? Will increasing fish availability lead to more food waste? These questions, and more, need to be considered before making blanket recommendations to either increase or decrease the consumption of different food groups.
· Economics will play a larger role in food systems and dietary patterns as a rising global middle class emerges.
· Another example that shows the importance of multidimensional decision making is the drawback of recommending foods based on a single sustainability indicator such as carbon emissions and not considering, for example, the nutritional benefit contributed to the diet (What Current Literature Tells Us about Sustainable Diets: Emerging Research Linking Dietary Patterns, Environmental Sustainability, and Economics. Adv Nutr. 2015 Jan; 6(1): 19–36. Nancy Auestad and Victor L Fulgoni, II).
Many existing research papers have taken this approach, but as noted by the following research, this approach can lead to flawed recommendations.
“The carbon footprint, estimated through GHGEs, has become an important criterion for assessing the environmental sustainability of alternative diets. In the current analyses, sweets, syrups, and soft drinks were associated with lowest GHGEs whether expressed per calories or per grams. However, even though sugar and sweets may have a low environmental impact, they cannot be viewed as the most-sustainable foods because the FAO definition of sustainable diets makes a direct reference to population well-being and health (2).” (Adam Drewnowski, Colin D Rehm, Agnes Martin, Eric O Verger, Marc Voinnesson, and Philippe Imbert Am J Clin Nutr 2015;101:184–91.)
· Energy and nutrient density of foods in relation to their overall carbon footprint is needed, but also environmental considerations such as carbon cycling, soil, water use and quality and biodiversity. Thus a framework or multidimensional model approach is needed.
- How to build on the diversity of the existing food systems?
· Continue to encourage investment in the farming community and the farming system.
· Invest in improving the infrastructure required to produce, transport, and store food.
· Recommend and consider the global interconnectedness of the food system. Consideration needs to be given to global trade. Food based recommendations will need to consider the reliance of countries on imports and economic volatility related to price and climate shocks. Special attention will need to be given on climate change adaptation strategies for growing and sourcing food. Investment of food resources and infrastructure need to be diverse and non-speculative.
· Embrace the complexity. The panel should be careful to not oversimplify the impact of cultural elements on food choices.
- What is in practice the range of actionable solutions from farm to fork that enable better nutritional outcomes of food systems?
· Solutions should be developed and evaluated for both developed and developing economies.
· In general recommendations to reduce both food waste and overconsumption will have beneficial impacts on the environment, economy and overall health.
· Encouraging responsible financial investment in the food sector. Currently, investments in the food and agriculture sector are limited due to the volatility of food commodities and global economic climate. While an increase in investment is needed, it must be non-speculative and made with responsible investment strategies to encourage sustainable growth.
· Encourage research in food loss and co-product utilization of agriculture foods. We are starting to see that many co-products in agriculture can help create more bio-based resilient products that offset fossil fuel based products. Encouraging research and innovation for climate adaptive agriculture solutions is critical.
· Advances in food technology to assist with food preservation and reduction in food losses in developing and developed countries.
· Investment and research in sustainable technologies that optimize resiliency and mitigation for growing food. Technologies should be reviewed on outcome based metrics and multi-dimensions e.g.) less inputs, improved soil, improved resiliency, less water, less carbon, improved soil and biodiversity. (ie technologies that meet a multidimensional sustainable and health improvement outcomes such as less nitrogen fertilizer and less water and improve nutrition and production efficiencies) .
· Encourage and promote accessibility to food in developing countries and in developed countries promoting investment in food deserts
· Continue to fund evidence based research on feeding people well.
· In the question posed by the panel it asks for actionable solutions from farm to fork. If we are going to start to cycle food and nutrients as part of a food system, we would encourage the panel to consider food systems that are not only farm to fork but fork to farm. Dairy uniquely can help in cycling inedible food stuffs and converting it to nutrient dense foods because the dairy cows, a ruminant animal, is able to convert the inedible foods to high quality proteins. Manure can also be a beneficial soil amendment and fertilizer. For developing worlds reduction in food waste is important but recovery through animal feeds and manure to create biogas and fertilizers can help with creating a more sustainable food systems.
- What action should different stakeholders, including governments, civil society and the private sector, take?
· We would like to encourage the panel to take a holistic approach and not demonize any one food or food group. There is more than one sustainable food system and multiple diets/food systems will be needed for people throughout the world to adapt lifestyles that benefit both the environment and human health. The panel may want to commence the project by stating that everyone should have access to healthy foods in quantities needed to sustain life.
· This is a grand challenge and, as such, everyone (e.g., industry, academics, not-for-profits, government, etc.) should be welcome at the table and help to achieve the goals. We encourage that the actions and decisions of the panel be made within the context of total food systems. The committee should work with the National Academy of Science in the United States and other agencies of comparable statue globally. We encourage the panel to create an environment where people from many disciplines can participate and collaborate. An example of a multidisciplinary research program that has been successful in driving investment in research, innovation, and information sharing is the human genome project. Given the complexity of the topic, the panel would be wise to ensure active collaboration and that the appropriate infrastructure is present to support the pursuit of sustainable nutrition.
· Finally when looking at the question of sustainable nutrition we also must remember Nutrition is a scientific discipline and sustainability is a question to examine within that discipline. Therefore we need to ensure that the right metrics for evaluating sustainability within the context of nutrition are developed and validated.
Donald Moore