Our report on this dialogue shows a cautious acceptance among producer organisations that diets which lower greenhouse gas emissions are not automatically a threat to profitability - including diets containing less meat.


But the dialogues also identified a variety of barriers standing in the way of progress, including supermarket pricing policies, a lack of direction from government and competition with high-carbon imported products.


If the UK is going to meet our 80% greenhouse gas cuts by 2050 under the Climate Change Act, emissions from food consumption will have to be cut by 70% in the same period. Achieving this will require advances in technology – including decarbonisation of the energy supply, production efficiencies and methane abatement – and behavioural changes, including eating less meat and wasting less food. Everyone, from consumer to government, producer to retailer, has a role to play in helping the UK achieve this target.


It’s difficult for consumers to find a way out of this difficulty. We don’t know how much embedded water there is in our Spanish tomato. This is where industry can again step up to its responsibilities. As well as increasing production efficiencies, they can take responsibility for water use along the whole of their supply chain, embracing a “stewardship” approach.


The Food Ethics Council has worked with Marks and Spencer, who is adopting this way of working, and other companies are following suit. In a nutshell, water stewardship means recognising that some of the biggest challenges to arise are not simply in measuring and managing water risks within your own supply chains, but in the practicalities of working with competing water users to manage shared resources.


Labelling can help too, but only if it goes hand in hand with stewardship and efficiencies. A label that assures good water stewardship, rather than simply telling consumers a product’s water footprint, can be a great way to tell a positive story as well as giving the consumer the opportunity to encourage the supplier to keep up the good job.


We’ve all heard horror stories about nut roast and lentil loaf at Christmas, and seen the hysteria in the press when Paul McCartney and other celebrities support initiatives to eat less meat. Yet it’s an issue that the West is beginning to wake up to, both in terms of meat’s carbon footprint, and the damage it can do to our health.


The Food Ethics Council and WWF-UK have initiated dialogues with meat and dairy producers over the thorny issue of meat consumption. The latest dialogues show that there is willingness to break the stalemate between producers and environmental groups over the role that changing livestock consumption has in tackling climate change.


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It’s easy to rely on production efficiencies in combating climate change, but far more challenging to accept that some problems stem from deeper structural problems with the functioning of our economy.


Take wasted food. It’s costly (the average UK family throws away between £250 and £400 worth of food every year), damages the environment, and in a world where a billion people are hungry, deeply unfair. Government backed anti-waste campaigns and kerbside collection services for food scraps can only go so far. They’ll only have lasting benefits for the environment and food security if they’re backed up by economic policies that tackle the causes of our throwaway society.


The bottom line is that whatever we choose to put on our plates this Christmas we have to face up to difficult decisions. As consumers we can try to do the right thing, and as experts we can make sure that government and industry take responsibility for helping shape a better food system. That’s a gift worth giving.


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