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Featured report: Grazed and Confused? It is safe to say that the debate over grass-fed meat has left people either polarised or confused. Is grass-fed better or is it worse for the climate? What’s actually true?

Project: Plating up Progress? A collaborative project to define usable metrics for assessing food industry progress in delivering sustainable and healthy diets.

Blog post: What narratives do companies use to promote alternative proteins such as plant-based meat replacements, insect-based foods and cellular agriculture products? In this blog post, Alexandra Sexton analyses marketing strategies used by alternative protein companies and counter-narratives from the livestock sector.

Is it possible to make some level of British ruminant production environmentally sustainable? In this blog post, Matthew Jordon outlines his proposed research into whether interventions such as agroforestry and reduced stocking densities could create a carbon-neutral UK ruminant livestock sector, as part of a rural landscape that delivers a number of publicly-desired ecosystem services.

In Fodder this week: Agriculture is among the top drivers of accelerating species loss, according to the IPBES report on biodiversity and ecosystems services, which calls for a reformation of the global economy “away from the current limited paradigm of economic growth”. Meanwhile, a paper finds that Coca-Cola reserves the right to prevent publication of the studies it funds if the results are not favourable; and New Zealand introduces a net zero carbon bill with separate targets for reducing agricultural methane emissions.

Featured FCRN publication: ‘What is a sustainable healthy diet?’ This 2014 discussion paper begins by highlighting the rationale for focusing on the diets question, and then moves on to discuss definitions of ‘good nutrition’ on the one hand, and ‘sustainability’ on the other. The main substance of the paper is organised according to the major food groups that constitute UK’s Eatwell plate, and it examines the health and sustainability issues that their consumption raises, before drawing some conclusions. A review of studies in this area is also included. An important limitation of the paper is that it focuses largely on developed country contexts.