Soup-To-Nuts Podcast: Carbon labeling, promises to be carbon neutral, positive emerge as top trend Whether or not you believe in climate change or the food industry’s contribution to the greenhouse gasses wrapping the earth and changing weather patterns, plenty of consumers do, and they increasingly are buying products based on their environmental impact – elevating sustainability and carbon labeling from political talking points to business priorities.
Currently only a handful of companies disclose on packaging the total amount of carbon produced during the manufacturing, distribution, use and disposal of food products, but many more see the writing on the wall and are developing rating and labeling programs to inform consumers about their products’ environmental impact.
The newly founded European Non-GMO Industry Association (ENGA) is backing the expansion of genetically modified-free production across the bloc and supporting Member States looking to promote non-GMO labelling, says co-founder Alexander Hissting.
A new members association representing the non-GMO food sector has set up shop in Brussels.
The European Non-GMO Industry Association (ENGA) was founded by the German Association for Food without Genetic Engineering (VLOG) and the Austrian Platform for GMO-free Food Production (ARGE Gentechnik-frei).
VLOG was established in 2010 to advocate for non-GMO food labelling, and in doing so, encourage greater GMO transparency on-pack. While VLOG’s non-GMO seal, called ‘Ohne GenTechnik’ in German, is ‘well established’ across its homeland, VLOG managing director Alexander Hissting saw potential for greater harmonisation across the bloc, he explained.
The short-term pursuit of profits by salmon producers is creating significant unaccounted environmental and social costs, which include growing mortality rates, damage to local ecosystems, pressure on wild fish stocks and poor fish welfare, reveals a new report.
Givaudan – is free to use for R&D and procurement professionals.
Suppliers pay for storefronts on the site (via an annual subscription) and get access to digital marketing and e-commerce analytics capabilities, along with analytics to track key performance indicators, including the number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs) generated by the storefronts, Knowde co-founder and CEO Ali Amin-Javaheri told FoodNavigator-USA.
“What we’ve seen with our other verticals is that suppliers initially use Knowde for lead generation purposes, and as they get more comfortable, they turn on the transaction side of the platform,” said Amin-Javaheri, who co-founded Knowde in 2017 and has raised $20m to date from backers including Sequoia Capital.
Selling direct-to-consumer (DTC) online has emerged as a favorite go-to-market strategy for emerging brands launching during the pandemic, and while it can offer better margins, a more intimate connection with shoppers and flexibility around pricing and assortment, the CEO of the DTC seafood company Get Maine Lobster warns going it alone online comes with significant challenges.
Among the most notable hurdles selling DTC online are driving discovery and brand building, which Mark Murrell explains he overcame when he founded Get Maine Lobster in 2009 by forging partnerships, some unexpected and others counterintuitive on the surface.
But, he explains in this episode of FoodNavigator-USA’s Investing in the Future of Food, maintaining this practice over the next decade and through the pandemic helped him drive 6X year-over-year growth and see a 425% increase in boxes and product shipped to more than 36,000 new consumers acquired in 2020 alone.