TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Big food companies improve policies but need implementation: Survey
Food producer Unilever has taken over Nestléâs top spot on Oxfamâs Behind the Brands Scorecard
Change Size
Food producer Unilever has taken over Nestlé's top spot on Oxfam's Behind the Brands Scorecard.
Unilever tops Nestlé with an overall score of 71 percent compared to Nestlé's 69 percent. Oxfam's scorecard ranks the 10 biggest food and beverage companies on their policies and commitment to improve food security and sustainability.
The scorecard covers seven themes impacting the lives of people living in poverty around the world: transparency, farmers, women, agricultural workers, access to land, water and climate change.
Eight of the 'Big 10' international food and beverage companies have improved their overall scores since February 2014 but French dairy producer Danone and the US-based Coca-Cola Company have failed to improve in the overall scorecard.
The 'Big 10' are getting more serious about social and environmental issues, although the level of ambition still varies enormously across the companies with big gaps between the leaders and laggards.
In the last 2 years, the companies improved their policies on paper but the new Oxfam Behind the Brand briefing Walking the Talk says they still have a long way to go in terms of implementing these new policies in practice.
The international campaign manager of Oxfam's Behind the Brands campaign, Monique van Zijl, said after two years of sustained pressure from the hundreds of thousands of Oxfam supporters, the 'Big 10' were definitely moving in the right direction.
'The real challenge has just begun, however. Companies now need to start putting new policy commitments into practice. Only then will real change happen for the millions of small farmers and agricultural workers. It is high time for companies to walk the talk," she said.
Van Zijl further said farmers were the lowest overall scoring theme on the scorecard. Six of the ten companies performed particularly badly on this theme and the majority of the companies still turned a blind eye to farmers in their supply chains.
'Extreme weather patterns are on the rise and destroy farmers' livelihoods across the world. Now more than ever companies must take responsibility to support workers and farmers in their supply chain to adapt to climate change,' she said about the Behind the Brands campaign launched in February 2013. (ebf)
