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Industry whistleblowers raise alarm over UK food security crisis

An anonymous group of food industry professionals has released a memo outlining a looming food security crisis, calling for urgent action to address systemic issues.

On 3 April, Inside Track, a nonprofit that provides a platform for “people working inside key industries to organise for change”, released a memo.

According to director Ned Younger, it was “written by an anonymous group of senior professionals in the UK’s top food companies, representing over 50% of the market share”.

The memo, addressed to “investors, directors, owners, and creditors”, outlines how traditional sourcing regions are increasingly unreliable due to factors such as soil degradation, water scarcity, and extreme weather events.

“We are releasing this memo because we have reached a moment of threat to food security like none other we have seen. Yield, quality, and predictability of supply from many of our most critical sourcing regions is not something we will be able to rely upon over the coming years,” it reads.

Food security crisis: Why now?

When asked why the memo was released with such urgency, Younger told Ingredients Network that there was a sense among the group that the levels of risk and urgency were increasing, “but neither the investor engagement levels nor executive attention on these issues had increased in kind, and this led to a feeling of a need to act”.

He explained that the Covid-19 pandemic response was driven by the fact that it consumed public attention, government, and food companies, which made co-ordinated action on an unprecedented scale possible.

In 2025, he said, we do not have the same operating environment with regard to environmental risks.

Long-term threat ‘is now a short-term threat’

The memo outlines that the climate reports developed and used by many major food companies inadequately address the risks to the environment.

Compared to the scale of threat, it says, strategies to mitigate these risks are “simply not material”.

The memo calls for companies to be more active in the policy environment and step up and take the action needed to secure a resilient food system.

It identified five threats to the UK’s food supply.

Deteriorating supply chains An expected increase in flooding and droughts, extreme heat, and weather events, alongside a depletion in soil health in key growing regions across the UK, is likely to decrease established regions’ ability to produce food.

Inability to source Sourcing challenges and shortages connected to climate change, water shortages, and soil degradation have been felt over the past couple of years. The global supply chain of coffee, cocoa, and sunflower oil, for example, has been impacted, and while this is currently experienced as a “price issue”, the memo notes that moving forward, it will become an “issue of ability to reliably source quality produce or commodities”.

Wishful strategy Company strategies are currently focused on finding new sourcing regions as current ones become untenable. Instead, the memo recommends that companies invest in robust plans to manage current supply chains sustainably.

A failure to see systems Producers, manufacturers, and retailers are sourcing in isolation, and as a result, are buying from the same depleting regions or are shifting their sourcing to new regions.

Commodities at risk Food manufacturers that rely on singular crops currently under threat are facing a commercial risk far greater than that of retailers. While the retailer is at risk of not being able to stock certain ranges, the manufacturer's whole business is at risk.

Food security crisis: How can this be addressed?

The memo reads: “The state of the world is not something to blame on food company CEOs or boards. But they are going to need to properly respond to it for the sake of our companies, the customers we serve, and the communities from which we source.”

It calls for an open conversation about the scale of change required, along with collective action, similar to the pandemic response.

In practice, the authors suggest this would look like the convening of food industry leaders in businesses’ home country as well as in their key sourcing countries.

Longer-term investments geared towards improving drought and flood resistance, soil health, and climate resilience in communities are also suggested, as well as upskilling and demanding more from auditors, and an increase in executives and board-level focus on food security.

Younger explained that too often the short-term nature of many sourcing arrangements fails to incentivise long-term investment in soil health, climate adaptation, water management, disaster resilience, and in the communities themselves that are sourcing partners.

“If no action is taken, there will be a catastrophic effect on the sourcing communities most impacted, price increases, instability of supply and commercial impact on many businesses in the food industry and their creditors and investors and owners,” he said.