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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Environment

Health & Wellbeing

Food Safety and Science

Industry facts

Reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill is a priority for FDF. In particular FDF's Five-Fold Environmental Ambition includes an aspiration for FDF members to send zero food and packaging waste from their sites to landfill from 2015.

More information on waste reduction.

View our Five-Fold Environmental Ambition: Waste: promoting resource efficiency

One of the main sources of public information on food and drink manufacturers is the Federation House Commitment Progress Report.

Water use information by signatories is presented in cubic meters per year as well as per tonne of product (excluding that embedded in products). Sector breakdown information is also included in the Report. Further information about the Federation House Commitment can also be found on the FHC2020 website.

Our members have been voluntarily embracing this particular challenge for a number of years, and they are now leading the way when it comes to the reformulation of popular products – meeting consumer concerns about health in a way that doesn't make any compromises on taste.

Read more in our report: Our recipe for change.

GDA stands for Guideline Daily Amount (GDAs) and is the recommended amount of specific nutrients an adult should consume each day.

More information about GDAs and GDA labels is available from www.gdalabel.org.uk.

The Join the Activators CD Rom was part of the Foodfitness campaign. The foodfitness website had been running for over four years and it was not reflective of recent developments on the obesity debate. With this in mind and no plans to update the content we have stopped producing the Join Activator CD and the associated website is also no longer available.

Some more relevant and useful websites have been launched such as the government's Change4Life campaign and website and the FSA's eatwell website.

Since 2006, when the Food Standard's Agency (FSA) took over the leadership role in Food Safety Week (FSW) the primary role of the FoodLink website became signposting to the FSW information.

With no further investment in the content we felt the time was right to close the FoodLink website and discontinue all the related leaflets and materials.

FDF remains a proud partner of Food Safety Week and will continue to support the essential work it carries out in promoting good food hygiene practice. The FSA's Food Safety Week website has information available and useful Food Safety Week resources.

The food and drink manufacturing industry is the single largest manufacturing sector in the UK.

For more statistics and facts, see stats at a glance.

The best source of data for turnover/sales is the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Annual Business Survey, see: ONS Annual Business Survey. For the food and soft drinks industry (which FDF covers) have a look at SIC 10 and SIC 11.07.

The food industry has as many sectors as there are products. Have a look at what sectors FDF represents: FDF Food Sectors.