State of the Nation's Food Industry 2024 launch webinar
12:30 - 13:15
We brought together a panel of experts to discuss the key findings from our flagship State of the Nation's Food Industry 2024 report.
It examines how 36 major UK food businesses are performing when it comes to supporting health and sustainability and the results have made national media headlines.
Our speaker panel, who shared views from the food industry and investor perspectives, included:
Fran Haycock, Head of Sustainability at Greencore
Julie Owst, Head of Sustainability at Bidfood
Rebecca Tobi Senior Business and Investor Engagement Manager, The Food Foundation
The webinar was chaired by The Food Foundation's Executive Director Anna Taylor.
Watch a recording of the webinar below 👇
Building on the discussion in our webinar we'll be broadcasting a special podcast episode with a panel of guests including Claire Atkins Morris of Sodexo, Lauren Woodley of Nomad Foods, Matt Lomas of Guy's & St Thomas Foundation) and Nilani Sritharan of Sainsbury's, chaired by our Executive Director Anna Taylor. It will be available from 12pm Friday, 22 November 2024.
Speaker biographies
Fran is the Head of Sustainability at Greencore – one of the largest convenience food manufactures in the UK, making sandwiches, sushi, salads, ready meals and more across sixteen manufacturing sites. She has a background in economics, finance and change management, moving into the Sustainability space within the last four years and has been leading sustainability at Greencore for the last 18 months. Fran is passionate about transformation leadership within the food system and is particularly motivated to lead Greencore through the required food system wide transformation on healthy and sustainable diets.
Julie has led Bidfood’s approach to sustainability for over five years, and is always looking for ways to raise the bar in foodservice sustainability, whether it be in terms of biodiversity protection, climate-friendlier food, ethics, food waste reduction and more. She has always been an advocate of greater disclosure and transparency, believing that this is a way to drive both competition and collaboration, believing that these are flip sides of the same coin in this area.
Anna joined The Food Foundation as its first Executive Director at the beginning of June 2015 after five years at the Department for International Development. At DFID Anna led the policy team on nutrition and supported the delivery of the UK’s global commitments to tackle undernutrition. Before joining DFID Anna worked for a number of international organisations including Save the Children and UNICEF and has been at the forefront of international leadership on nutrition for several years, supporting programmes in a wide range of contexts in Africa and South Asia. Anna has also worked for the UK Department of Health. In 2014 she was awarded an OBE for her work to address the global burden of undernutrition. She did a MSc in Human Nutrition at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1994. In May 2017 Anna became a member of the London Food Board to advise the Mayor of London and the GLA on the food matters that affect Londoners. She is a Board member for Veg Power and an advisor to the International Food Policy Research Institute. She served as Chief Independent Adviser to Henry Dimbleby for the development of the National Food Strategy published in 2021.
Rebecca joined the Food Foundation in January 2020, leading on the Peas Please initiative. These days she manages our business and investor engagement team, with oversight of our work engaging food businesses, investors and policy-makers with the need to transition the UK towards a more sustainable and healthy food system. This includes our Peas Please and Plating Up Progress projects.
Rebecca is a Registered Nutritionist (RNutr) with a background in science communication, joining the Food Foundation from the Nutrition Society. In a previous life, Rebecca worked in the marketing and tech sectors before deciding to move into nutrition, obtaining a MSc in Nutrition for Global Health at the London School of Hygiene and Medicine.
Rebecca is a lover of veg (peas really are her favourite vegetable), a staunch advocate for evidence-based nutrition communication, and is passionate about structural changes that make healthy and sustainable diets accessible for all.