The impact of food processing on the sustainability of the food supply chain

The demand for high quality, safe, nutritious processed foods will continue to increase as the global population and affluence increases. This imposes an enormous burden on the environment and the food processing industry has responded by making progress in reducing the carbon and water footprints of products and the amount of waste generated. However, environmental sustainability cannot be considered in isolation because economic and social sustainability are essential to the industry. To ensure that the food processing industry is economically and environmentally sustainable, it is important to take an integrated approach of the whole food supply chain including farm and post operations. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a tool that facilitates this approach and will enable meaningful environmental messages to be communicated to consumers who are becoming increasingly aware of the environmental impact of the products that they purchase. As the food processing industry becomes more globalised it is importance that analyses standardise social and economic factors in environmental assessment so that meaningful comparisons can be made for monitoring environmental performance, regulatory compliance and consumer communication. As well as technological advances to enable the reduction of the environmental footprints of processed foods, it is necessary to change consumer behaviour to reduce consumption to ensure that the global food processing system is sustainable.