Social footprint labelling

11 years ago, Zenith proposed a new concept of environmental impact labelling to accompany the current system for nutrition labelling.

Now, the French organisation Ferme France has announced a far broader social footprint label, to be introduced on trial products before the end of this year.

The French scheme has an admirable simplicity, summarising social impact in a single score out of 100.

Underpinning the French figure is a complex structure of analysis:

• 6 categories – environment, traceability, nutrition/health, work conditions and animal well-being, equity and economic contribution, general interest

• 36 sub-categories

• 185 indicators

• 4 performance levels

• full supply chain analysis.

Other existing methodologies such as the Nutri-Score will be incorporated.

Even the Zenith proposal was going to incur considerable cost, but there will be a time when social footprints are as common as nutrition labels.