Category: Sustainability & food

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Biodiversity- far behind corporate climate change initiatives

It’s International Biodiversity Day today and it might seem like yet another symbolic initiative where you can show pictures of bees in your feed and appear to do good. But Biodiversity deserves better. Most of us tend to forget that on a global scale, at least according to the planetary boundaries and other researchers, biodiversity is a more acute issue than climate change.

On a corporate level, biodiversity is still an underdeveloped area of sustainability. Sectors with a direct and large impact on biodiversity (such as forestry and agriculture) are more advanced in the area than companies with an indirect impact, according to a recent report by IVL on behalf of the Swedish EPA. One of the reasons biodiversity work is underdeveloped is because there is no established standard for calculating impact and setting quantitative goals for biodiversity. On the climate side, Greenhouse Gas Protocol may be imperfect but it has leveled the playing field among companies and makes sure that climate impact is calculated in a standardized fashion.

As the authors of the report note, biodiversity is often governed using certifications. I would say that organic certification is the most common way companies govern biodiversity. I’m currently researching grocery and food companies and in this sector there are often targets for share of organic produce, for example that 10% of sales should be organic. As we know, organic certifications benefit biodiversity since pesticides is a threat to biodiversity. Sadly, the share of organic food sold in Sweden is currently declining.

However, biodiversity is much more than pesticides. It is of course also related to pollution more generally, such as water pollution. Perhaps less well known, and as The UN emphasizes, it is also about genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is one key measure used by the planetary boundaries framework. It means that monocultures and using only certain breeds on a large scale is not very beneficial for biodiversity. It also makes systems less resilient because if one pest that likes this particular species finds it, it can threaten the whole harvest. I have rarely seen this discussed in corporate sustainability reports. And as customers we rarely get information of the kind of breed we consume (probably Ross or Cobb in terms of chicken) so we may not be aware of the very limited biodiversity in what we consume.

To end, I want to highlight some positive examples I have come across. Plockhugget is a Swedish company that promotes more biodiverse forests through its business. If you buy a phone case from Swedish startup Bark, you may get wood from Plockhugget and you also get information on the specific type of wood used for your case and where it grew etc. I just bought a phone case made from wood that grew on Kungliga Djurgården, a large park close to were I live in Stockholm. It doesn’t get more local than that and no monocultures were involved. The tree no doubt had a good life too.

Buying food at the farmers market is another way to support biodiversity. Small scale farming has, according to a recent study by researchers at SLU, better biodiversity effects than large scale farming. If you don’t have time to visit the farmers market, Gröna gårdar sells only grass fed beef (grazing is really good for biodiversity) from small to medium size farms via the internet. There may also be farms that do direct sales to customers in the city, I only yesterday bought eggs from Pekin Bantam hens via Franzéns Charkuterier (on the picture) for example. Franzéns also have Linderöd pigs, another old breed you won’t find in conventional food chains. Supporting such small businesses, who don’t work with the mainstream breeds optimized for large scale production, supports genetic variety.

Beautiful Pekin Bantam eggs you won’t find in the grocery store

Another promising initiative is Crowdfarming. They support direct sales between farmers and customers within Europe. When you buy food via Crowdfarming you can see what variety you buy (the common Hass avocado or the less common Reed variety for example) and whether the farm that cultivated it is small, medium or large and other sustainability initiatives at this farm. Crowdfarming also educates its customers on the types of varieties that exist and when their proper season starts etc.

Obviously, biodiversity is not only an issue for forestry or agriculture. However, I have come across fewer good examples from other industries. If you know of other good examples, please let me know in the comments. I still have much to learn in regards to biodiversity. There is still limited research within business studies on this issue too.

Wish you all a good International Biodiversity Day

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Is globalization to blame for our environmental problems?

Following the debates in the newspapers, it seems globalization is to blame for a lot. It’s often described as the root cause of some of society’s big problems. Globalization causes inequality, financial crises, unregulated multinationals that act freely on a global scale, environmental pollution etc. An assumption in these debates is that globalization exists. However, few of us take the time to define what we really mean when we say globalization.

This however, is not how we do it at the introductory course ‘Companies and society’ which I teach at Örebro University business studies bachelor program. In the course, we review three perspectives on what globalization is and discuss whether it’s a good thing and lastly the students write a report on a company in the food sector as an example of globalization.

Teaching this course has fundamentally changed my view of globalization. While I used to assume that globalization is a fact, I don’t anymore believe we have ever had globalization. In fact, nowadays I concur with the ‘historical perspective’ on globalization i.e. that the economy, mobility and trade has, throughout the history, been highly international but never global. Even today we know of a few tribes who are undoubtedly isolated from the rest of us. Some countries are very interconnected, but not others. So maybe internationalization is a better word, if this is what we really mean?

Unlike me, however, most students agree with one of the other two perspectives on globalization in our course book: that globalization is a fundamentally new phase in recent history or that the term at least captures some critical new aspects of modern times.

Nevertheless, when the students investigate companies and globalization, they capture some of the acute sustainability issues in the food industry today. Thus not only do the students learn about globalization and read quotes from Stiglitz and others, they also get up to date on current sustainability issues in the food sector, such as how the industry calculates climate impact of chicken meat. Chicken is often argued to be a climate smart meat choice, but, as the group thoughtfully discussed, it depends on how you calculate and whether you include the climate impact of the feed (often imported soy). I have written about the fallacy of CO2 calculations on this blog before. It’s often overlooked that there are multiple ways to calculate climate impact of food.

Another group discussed the use of imported palm oil, often from Indonesia, in food products. By now most of us know that palm oil should be avoided or at least certified if we use it. However, this group of students highlighted that palm oil requires less land than other kinds of oils that could replace it and thus that the sustainability consequences are not clearcut. Clearly, we don’t want to use more land than necessary for food production. So there are both positive and negative environmental consequences of palm oil. How do you trade off one environmental consequence against another?

Two other groups discussed fish, a food that is rarely recognized as an environmental problem. One group mentioned how the fish feed used in aquaculture drives overfishing of the seas, something I have written about here before. The other group instead focused on sustainably caught fish, MSC certified fish, but that the company ships it half-way around the world for filleting by hand in China and then back to Scandinavia. While this seems illogical, the group explained that it means more of the fish can be used compared to machine filleting.

Overall, we learned a lot not just about globalization but also about how and why companies act as they do. Some of these behaviors seem unreasonable as an outsider. However, we need to identify not only the consequences of these ‘global’ corporate behaviors but also understand the rationale behind them. There is a reason and context to why the company started doing things as they do. Only when we understand this can we find alternative solutions.

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Companies and science: some take aways from the Monsanto trial

US multinational Monsanto has been involved in countless trials for its products and most recently its popular weed killer Roundup. The lateste trial, the Johnson cancer case, concerns a school groundkeeper and was the first to take the weed killer Roundup to trial. The trial got a lot of publicity, especially after Johnson famously won. Supposedly, this ‘win’ opens up for further trials on cancer and Roundup and is thus bad news for Monsanto. It is also bad news for German pharmaceutical company Bayer, that just recently acquired Monsanto. 

Aside from the fact that this widely used weed killer, Roundup, might cause cancer, the case is interesting because it reveals how Monsanto was actively working to shape the science around its product. During the trial, letters were released that revealed many examples of such questionable science-business practices. As one example, Monsanto appears to have been involved in ghost writing i.e. that the company writes text and then asks academics put their name, as authors, on it. As one of the revealed examples, Stanford researcher Mr Henry I. Miller wrote a piece on Forbes’s website in 2015, based on a Monsanto draft and failed to mention any involvement by Monsanto thereby violating Forbes policy for authors. The Forbes piece in question was written in response to the findings of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a branch of the World Health Organization, that had just labeled glyphosate (ingredient in Roundup) a probable carcinogen. 

Another incident concerns the retraction of research that is unfavorable for the company. In 2013, while he was still editor of the journal ‘Food and Chemical Toxicology’, Mr. Hayes retracted a key study damaging to Monsanto that found that Roundup, and genetically modified corn, could cause cancer and early death in rats. Later, it surfaced that Mr Hayes had had a contractual relationship with Monsanto. This piece in the NYT covers most of the story. This article by science journalist Paul Thacker is also worth while.

What can we learn from this in terms of business and sustainability? Certain companies will inevitably have a strong interest in research, for example to show that their products are safe and effective. In my opinion, the fine line between science, corporate interests and corruption is a key business ethics issue for these companies that the management needs to handle. If not, when such business practices fail, it may show up as cases of unethical business practices, corruption or in the worst case, as for Monsanto, as legal cases. The EU regulation on non-financial reporting requires large companies to report on their anti-corruption and anti-bribery policies and practices. For companies with a large stake in science, how to avoid this kind of unethical incidents should be accounted for in this section.

Moreover, as a take away for us as researchers, we cannot be naive regarding the very strong incentives certain companies may have to meddle with science. While uncovering such cases may feed the publics distrust in science and media, e.g. the fake news debate, not uncovering biased or in worst cases incorrect research may risk the whole scientific system as such.

Regarding questionable retractions of research papers, to my mind full transparency is to not actually retract a paper but to let it remain with proper commentary for example as to why the research findings or methods are questionable. Paper retractions may otherwise, if we are not very careful, become a tool for censorship.

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Sustainability & fish farming: working with a real case

Aquaculture, such as fish farming, is a key industry to ensure  sustainable food production in the future. Foods deriving from the seas face many challenges such overfishing and water pollution. At the same time, sea food has many benefits such as low climate impact and high nutritional value.

It is quite clear today that wild fish supply is not sufficient and that aquaculture is necessary in some form in order to supply current populations with sea food. However, fish farming has been criticized for unsustainable practices through the years and the industry still struggles with some of them like sea lice, escapes and sustainable feed sources.

In the course I teach at NHH ‘Measuring sustainability’ we each year work with  a real case on how to measure sustainability. Last autumn, we collaborated with Norwegian Responsible Investment association Norsif on how we can measure and evaluate the sustainability of aquaculture companies. One of the things I love about these cases is the creativity the students show when coming up with new ideas and solutions. I truly believe this kind of creativity, combined with academic thinking and facts, is one of the most important skills we can teach students.

One of the learning points from working with the aquaculture case is how important national regulation is for sustainable fish farming. One of the drastic differences is the use of antibiotics. Aquaculture uses significant amounts of antibiotics, which is a critical issue considering antibiotic resistance, but the industry also shows that it can do without it when it has to, such as in Norway.

Another difficult issue is that fish farming in Europe is mostly done with omnivorous fish such as salmon. It is less efficient to raise fish that partly eats other fish than fish that only feeds on algea. Instead of feeding the salmon other fish, we could eat this fish directly and thus skip the step of raising the salmon. The fish in the feed can also lead to further overfishing. Of course we can feed salmon a vegetarian diet but salmon that are fed on vegetable rather than animal proteins may be lacking in Omega-3, which is one of the main reasons salmon are so healthy for a human diet. A better solution would be to instead farm a fish that naturally feeds on for example algea.

Another key issue for sustainability, the students discovered, is future orientation of the companies and investment in research to find sustainable solutions to issues we have not yet solved. During the course, we we’re visited by the head of sustainability and risk at Cermaq, Wenche Gronbrekk, who explained how the company works to address sustainability issues. Wenche has answered a few of my questions below and also describes their investment in future solutions: iFarm.

Sabina: The Norwegian aquaculture industry has made quite some progress in terms of addressing its sustainability challenges. What are, in your opinion, some of the main achievements? 
Wenche: We have made great progress in lifting the industry standard the past years through collaboration –  through dialogue and knowledge sharing between government, research and industry. Also, in the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI), addressing key issues such as standardization, feed ingredients and biosecurity. Vaccine development has also been key to advancing sustainability to the level we see today.

Sabina: Still, as we have learnt when working with this case, challenges remain. What’s on top of your to-do-list in terms of sustainability?
Wenche: Sustainability requires continuous effort, and we work every day to be better than just complying with minimum standards. Developing new solutions that address key problems is also a priority – such as our iFarm concept. It may solve many of the key challenges today through individualized treatment of each fish, increasing animal health and welfare, optimizing feeding and any need for treatment, which may in turn reduce the environmental footprint of our activities.

Sabina: Sustainability is, according to its definition, about the long term perspective, future generations even. Still most organisations operate with a shorter time perspective in their day-to-day business. How are you able to take the long term perspective into account?
Wenche: Salmon farming is largely dependent on taking a long term view – we operate in the sea and biological risks do not respect financial quarters. To have a business over time, our operations need to be sustainable in all aspects: environmentally, socially and economically. 

Sabina: Many who work as sustainability officers or even head of sustainability find that change management is crucial in order to conduct their work. Is this your experience as well?
Wenche: As a sustainability officer you need to work across the organization, break silos and in many ways be a change agent. Integrating sustainability in business strategy also means that many companies need to innovate their business model – and it is my experience that sustainability professionals often play a central part in this transformation.

A big thank you to Wenche and Cermaq for sharing your experiences with us and also to Norsif and Norsif member Folketrygdfondet and Tine Fossland who attended the students presentations and provided feedback on their evaluation models. We could not have done this without you!

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Why young women going vegetarian for the climate is not necessarily a good thing

Last year one in five of Swedish young women became vegetarian because of climate change. Some might think that this is excellent news. We hear a lot that we should all eat less meat, ideally become vegetarians. The complex problem of food and sustainability has been reduced to the simple statement that vegetables are all good and meat overall bad. Unsurprisingly, such black and white statements are oversimplifications. One of the simplifications is the issue of methane and whether or not it is part of the carbon cycle, as I’ve previously written about here.

Another simplification is how the climate impact of food is calculated. Many calculations are based on how much CO2 is released  per kilogram of the food. This, however, has been criticized by research that shows that calculating CO2 per volume, calorie or even nutrient will give different results. The researchers conclude that “the sustainability of alternative diets, matched for energy and nutrient adequacy, can only be made on the basis of calories and nutrient contents and not per gram of weight”. Surprisingly, if you calculate climate impact per calorie, lettuce appears worse than bacon. Basically, how we calculate the climate impact of food makes a big difference. Like, Gunnar Rundgren I believe that there’s a point in calculating emission per nutrient density.

Taking nutrients into account when calculating climate impact is important because, as Rockström has pointed out, food is both a key factor in the health epidemic as well as the climate. Half of Swedish female adolescents have iron deficiency, one in three women in general. It is well known that iron from meat type of sources is absorbed more easily (25%) than from vegetable sources (5-10%). Research on diets and climate change acknowledges that reduced meat in diets is especially problematic for young women for this reason.

If we encourage women with iron deficiency to become vegetarians, we’d better be sure it is beneficial for the climate.

I am not so sure it is and I’ll use the following example with two high impact foods to illustrate why. Lamb is generally viewed as the meat with the highest climate impact. Rice, because of methane emissions, is among the highest climate impact grains. A Swedish lamb provides a carbon footprint of 16 kg CO2-equivalent per slaughtered kg lamb. A kilo of Thai rice provides between 1.34- 3.57 CO2-e per kg. Let’s say 2.4 kg CO2-e/kg.

Calculating emissions according to weight, yes lamb (16/kg) is much worse for the climate than rice (2.4/kg). You can eat six times as much rice and still release less CO2.

However, we have all heard about empty calories. What’s important is not only how much we eat but the nutrients the food provides us with. And we have to consider a woman’s recommended daily intake of iron, around 15 mg (9 mg for men). So here’s the issue. You would have to eat 3.2 kg rice a day to get the daily iron allowance. And considering the sort of iron and its lower absorption, it is even more. If you instead eat lamb, maybe even liver, 300g/day is enough. Of course, in reality no one would rely on a single food to provide all the necessary iron but the figure shows how efficient liver would be in doing so.

So to get your recommended daily intake of iron, what is the climate impact? For Thai rice the climate impact is at least 7,68 kg CO2-e. For Swedish lamb liver it’s 4,8 kg CO2-e.

Now, you might say, young Swedish women know about empty calories and would go for broccoli rather than rice. Still lamb liver is more efficient than broccoli in delivering iron per kg CO2-e. You would have to eat more than 2,3 kg broccoli to get the recommended daily intake. In climate impact that’s (using the example of UK broccoli) ca 5,3 kg CO2-e.

My message is really this. We have to consider nutrient content and absorption instead of climate impact per weight or calorie. When we consider nutrient content and absorption, we may find that going vegetarian is not a good idea. Instead, eating small amounts of nutrient dense food, like lamb liver, helps young women to maintain their health.

It is more climate friendly to eat small amounts of nutrient dense foods than eating large quantities of empty calories.

The nutrient argument was highlighted by researchers with connections to the Swedish dairy industry in 2010. While we of course have to be wary of industry motives, I still believe the overall idea of considering nutrients in relation to climate impact is a sound idea. And the general lesson here is that how we calculate affects the results we get.

On the picture: grazing sheep on the west coast of Norway, are they really that bad for the climate? It depends on how you calculate.

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Can we really compare meat to fossil fuels?

Many sustainability proponents these days encourage us to become vegetarians. At least once a day there is some article along these lines in my Twitter feed. Unfortunately, there are many arguments circulating in this debate that are quite misleading. The worst error people make, in my opinion, is to equate emissions from cattle with emissions from fossil fuels.

This is simply misleading because these emissions have very different relationships to the carbon cycle. By burning fossil fuels we are adding carbon to the carbon cycle whereas emissions from cattle have a role within the carbon cycle, it naturally belongs there.

Let me explain. We all learnt about the carbon cycle in school and thus we should know that carbon circulates between the atmosphere, to plants, to animals and us humans and is yet again released into the air. Microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi etc. also play a role in this. It is how it should work in nature. Animals have a part to play in this cycle by both storing and releasing carbon in different forms.

Now whereas cattle is part of this normal carbon cycle fossil fuels are not. Fossil fuel is stored away carbon that is suddenly released into the atmosphere through human intervention. Because the natural carbon cycle cannot absorb all this added carbon, a larger portion of it remains in the atmosphere. The natural equivalent is a volcanic eruption. But these days we have constant man-made emissions of such stored away carbon. This way, we add carbon to the atmosphere that was not there before and would not have been released without us. This is indisputable and should really be our focus since we know this for certain.

Now some argue that because we hold cattle as part of our food chain we have affected the carbon cycle by raising more cows than what existed before human intervention, i.e. before animal husbandry. That there are more animals on earth today, and particularly ruminants, is a hypothesis that is difficult to prove. We don’t know exactly how many animals existed before our animal husbandry or how many of these were ruminants, so it is only estimates. Even if there are more ruminants living on earth today, it is not necessarily a problem because cattle also absorbs carbon. Just as us humans, their bodies are partly built of carbon that is released through breathing and when we die etc.

The problem with more ruminants on earth, according to the veggie proponents, is that ruminants release more methane than other animals. Thus we have shifted the carbon cycle towards more methane, they argue. However, the more we learn about methane, it is not really an isolated case of cows as such but methane producing bacteria that we find in all kinds of environments. Moreover, most of these emissions do belong to the natural carbon cycle that was there before us. It is possible that human behavior provide more beneficial environments for these methane bacteria, by raising more ruminants (who release methane) and rice agriculture. But then again, there might have been wild animals and natural swamps before and if so there has not been a significant change. We basically don’t know. There are estimates in both directions.

Acting on very incomplete information on how methane acts is in my opinion risky. Before we start to mess with the methane-producing bacteria in the cow’s stomach (which they are now starting to do), let’s learn more on how it actually operates. And when we do address methane, let’s include all man-made sources such as rice, landfills and wetlands too.

Thus we see that equating fossil fuel emissions to emissions from cattle is misleading. In the case of fossil fuels we know that we have added carbon to the carbon cycle and in these amounts it cannot be absorbed in the cycle (although the oceans have compensated a lot). In the case of cows, we don’t really know whether we have shifted the carbon cycle towards more methane because of animal husbandry. Moreover,  the case is not just about cows but methane producing bacteria that could be affected by many of our activities. We still need to learn much more. So until we do, let’s address the things we know for certain and that are urgent: our red meat habit is pretty stable whereas our flying habits have exploded the last decades.

There’s so much more to say on the subject of climate change and food but I find this to be one of the main points.

On the picture: cow at Lovö Prästgård in the Stockholm area.

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Can conscious consumerism change the world?

Last week, I heard from two sources that conscious consumerism, i.e. using your purchases to support good business practices is not enough. In this podcast, Stiv Wilson argues that we need to get political instead. Which is exactly what their organization Story of Stuff is all about. This article by blogger Alden Wicker states it a little more harshly:

“Conscious consumerism is a lie. Small steps taken by thoughtful consumers—to recycle, to eat locally, to buy a blouse made of organic cotton instead of polyester—will not change the world”.

These kinds of arguments are used in two contexts: those that want us to get involved politically instead, as in the above two cases, or those that want to give up, ‘it doesn’t matter anyway’, ‘we can’t change the system’ and so on.

Unsurprisingly, I do believe my purchases matter. I believe in political power too. I also believe I can make a difference with my research and teaching. Basically, let’s use the means that are available to us and with which we are comfortable. Some people are comfortable marching for environmental causes, others are more comfortable changing their purchasing behavior. However, like the politician that argues for public service and then doesn’t pay the tv-licence, it is desirable to try to be consistent.

How could then purchasing behavior make a difference? Will H&M or Varner notice that I am doing a no-shopping year? No, they will not. Most likely we cannot affect H&M and Varner politically either. They are private companies, not states, and they can shop around for the tax and environmental rules that suit them, if they like.

So the impact of purchasing behavior depends on who you are trying to affect and how important your purchases are to them.

My local organic food store in Bergen has only so many customers and I purchase most of my food there. They would notice if I move. The people I purchase food from at the farmers market might notice (Bergen’s farmers market on the picture above) . Based on this fact, I feel quite comfortable telling people to stop buying from the fashion giants (they will not notice) and start buying from small sustainable brands (who will notice). For small businesses, your purchase does make a difference.

At this point, the ‘elitist’ argument usually appears. The small sustainable brands are more expensive. Not everyone can afford to buy all their food at the organic food store. This is absolutely true but it is not an argument against conscious purchasing behavior generally. We who can afford the sustainable brands have a bigger environmental footprint than people with less purchasing power. It is more important that those with the biggest environmental impact and who can afford do change their behavior. Moreover, buying food directly from the farmer is not necessarily more expensive. Second hand stores are terribly cheap.  Most likely, we could all save money by buying less and learning to mend.

But how do we affect the big companies that are larger than states and that we cannot affect by vote or with our individual purchases? I think maybe social movements can play a role here. These companies are at least concerned with trends among customers. How large groups of consumers behave affect their business. Now I might have prided myself in being the only one I know that is on a shopping fast. Getting active on Instagram, however, I soon discovered that there are many more like me. You could even say I am late to the trend. We are not as unique as we might like to believe. If I decide to only buy grass-fed local meat, there are many more like me, acting on similar impulses. Most likely we are already part of some social movement or trend, whether we know it or not. And, as group, how we behave does concern these companies.

So, in my opinion, our consumption does impact the world and if you choose to purchase consciously it will too. This, however, is not an excuse for politicians and companies to not do their job and instead put all responsibility on the consumer’s shoulders (as happens all to often). We have some big challenges, so we all need to do our best.

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When pollution comes back to haunt us

You might remember the cadmium in imported rice scandal or lead in imported rice scandal. These are examples of heavy metal contamination of imported foods. ‘We import foods from countries with too low environmental standards’, you might think. And that’s true.

But how did the heavy metals end up in the foods? How did a fifth of China’s farmland become contaminated? Countries like China and India have for quite some time been producing for our consumption. It has been attractive because of price, but it has also been done under lower environmental standards. One example is the dyeing of clothes. Another example is the production of pharmaceuticals. We know that these industries pollute the water and soils (and there are of course further industries in this category). We also know that residuals of the toxic waste may remain in what we import.

So, ironically,  when these countries produce for our consumption, the resulting pollution comes back to haunt us in the foods we import.

Even more ironically, while contamination of soils in India and China is spreading, we are in Scandinavia placing buildings on uncontaminated good soils that used to be farmland. The national strategy is to rely on imports, both of foods and other kinds of manufacturing. When this is the strategy, we have an interest in the countries that we are now dependent on. It is in our interest that their farmland and water supply remains uncontaminated so that they can continue to produce for us. There is only so much farmland in the world. If our strategy is to rely on imports, then we need to be concerned with the pollution in the countries we import from. Because it is not only the local population’s food supply that is contaminated, it’s ours too.

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Antibiotic resistant bacteria found in children

New research findings this week report that one in five of kindergarten kids carry antibiotic resistant bacteria. This was in Sweden, one of the countries with the lowest antiobiotic use in the world (Norway is one of the few better performing countries). Until now, Swedes could feel safe knowing that relatively low national use in humans and animals is enough to keep antiobiotic resistance at bay.

But we live in a globalised world. Our import of food from countries with extensive use of antibiotics keep increasing. We also travel extensively and pick up resistant bacteria when doing so, particularly if we take antiobiotics in countries where resistant bacteria is common.

There are some aspects here we as individuals cannot control. National and International politics have to work on lowering antibiotics use for example in China and the US.

But there are also things we can do. Antibiotic resistance is one of the most important arguments for buying Swedish or, even better, Norwegian food. While some think antibiotic resistance only concerns meat and is avoided by going vegetarian, unfortunately it is not as easy. All vegetables has to be pollinated and bees used for this purpose are also treated with antibiotics, just like animals. Resistant bacteria are found here too.  So to limit the use of antibiotics and hence resistance, we should buy food from low antibiotics countries. The question is not so much which foods we buy as the amount of antibiotics the producing country allows. 

By importing more and more food from countries with high antibiotic use, as we’ve done the last decades, we contribute to the antibiotic resistance problem.

While it is easy to make conscious choices in the supermarket, a lot of the imported foods are consumed when eating out. We can always ask though, which country the food comes from and let it inform our choice.

Norway this year strengthened the requirement to consider social and environmental aspects in public procurement.  I hope schools, hospitals and public work places will take this opportunity to consider antibiotic use when buying foods for schools and hospitals. Because these are the places that will most likely suffer from antibiotic resistance when it increases.