Going the extra food mile

The carbon footprint and food miles associated with individual products are hot topics for exporters of fresh vegetables from Kenya, and this report reveals some of their worries.
From The Africa Channel

UK retail giant Marks & Spencer (M&S) has reassured Kenyan agricultural exporters that it will not cut imports of fresh produce . In an e-mail briefing, the retailer’s chief executive officer, Stuart Rose, said uninterrupted trade with Kenyan horticulture industry is part of its success, and said recent moves to alert customers to the environmental impact of air-freight should not worry the country’s producers.


TK: What strikes me in this conversation is the length and assumed expense to which retailers will go to measure and label something so complex as the carbon footprint. In the story, Tesco said it is committed to develop a more in-depth labelling system to show the total amount of carbon emissions caused by every product. Retailers will do all of this voluntarily, but compelling U.S . retailers to display country of origin labeling is a deal-breaker? I wonder about that.